


To Break (temporarily discontinued)

by orphan_account



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies), Thor 2 - Fandom
Genre: First Time, Forced Marriage, Hermaphrodites, Intersex!Loki, Intersexuality, Jötunn Loki, Loki Feels, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Other, Queen!Loki, intense thorki sex, lots of vaginal sex, odin ships it, pain and sadness, thor and loki are brothers here before they become lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-19
Updated: 2013-06-26
Packaged: 2017-12-08 21:46:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 23,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/766379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Loki's battle with the Avengers, Odin forces the Trickster into a loveless marriage with Thor, inviting all of Asgard to treat Loki as a woman - the Queen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There is a crack in the stone. It’s a small hole, and so far above his head into the flat wall, if he tried to climb for it he would undoubtedly fall. It emits a bleak ray of daylight from the outside: a promise of freedom.

And yet here, in this damp, dark hell, there is no such thing as promise.

Whiter and more translucent than the light itself is Loki’s bare form, battered from his injuries as Asgard’s prisoner. The dried wounds along his sides split with the movement of his breathing, bleeding anew. He stares into that crack with dehydrated eyes, peering from the inside of the dark jail cell. If he was still his younger self – clinging to the hope and expectations that poisoned the truth of his existence – he ponders if he would feel longing; if he would still receive some self-gratification believing he could belong to something – could share in a collective power – could give himself _purpose_. If he still had faith in that way of life, he thinks he would turn his head unto that ray of light and see a superficial glimpse of hope.

But in this state of being, here and now, he sees the truth very clearly. A mockery of his existence. A lie.

He tears his gaze away from it, the rough tugging of shackles around his wrists a pleasurable reminder of true pain – a physical distraction from the reality he can’t escape. He leans into the coarse stone against his back, uncomfortably cold if not for his Jotun blood.

All is silent.

He is alone with the sound of his breath.


	2. Chapter 2

Guards escort the Trickster god across the halls of his once-home. Though the tread past golden interlaced doors and grand tiled walls is absent of onlookers, Loki feels the eyes of Asgard on him – piercing, judging, remembering. He walks without fear; he has lived in the dark for too long, felt needles and knives in his flesh too many times, to _fear_. And so he lets these robust men lead the way, a fugitive prince with a smile creasing his lips.

They lead him into a small hall, tugging him forward by the chains that bind his wrists. The room is dimly-lit and red by flickering torches, and he traces the gold tapestries and furnishings with his eyes until he comes to a realization: he has been taken to Allfather’s chamber. For a moment, he stands there quizzically; had he not been summoned this day for his trial?

The guards pull at him roughly, holding up his arms – and unexpectedly, they remove his shackles, shuffling behind him with the clinking sound of chains before departing. The resonance of heavy doors slamming quakes through his ears before there is silence; and with the silence, he beholds another’s presence.

Odin.

There is a tense ball congesting in Loki’s throat as Allfather’s image breeds so many things: hatred, yearning, denouncement, love, betrayal, condemnation – fear. But Loki no longer feels fear.

The God of Gallows rises before him, robes glinting yellow in the firelight, eminent with pride and Gungnir in hand as he steps forward. But there is an ease in his posture and a casualness in his dress that leads Loki’s mind to wonder; without a crown on his head or an arena bred to the hilt with spectators, Odin is not in the position to condemn Loki to a sentence nor expose him to the hatred of Asgard. Instead, they are alone in the presence of torchlight and his father’s bed – and the Trickster god winces in suspicion upon this meeting. This is not what he had expected at all.

Then Odin speaks before he can deduce any more.

“My son,” he begins, as he has begun since the earliest of Loki’s memories, “Loki…”

“It would do you little ill at this point not to call me such,” the Trickster interrupts. “We both know I am not your son.”

“It would seem so,” Odin agrees, and pauses there, staring into green eyes. “In your absence, the Jotun have demanded retribution after the slaying of their king, your father. We were prepared to enter war for some time, but…in the weakened state of our enemies,-“ Loki nods to himself silently, images of the destroyed Bifrost recounting in his mind- “they have called for a provisional state of peace until a proper solution be established.”

The God of Lies winces, hands folded behind his back as Allfather traces his eyes over his not-son, pacing in a circle around him; Loki’s gaze does not follow.

“However, that time of peace has overridden itself - become unsteady – with the return of Jotunheim’s lost prince, from whom the Jotun have recently demanded conviction for his crimes of destruction and defraudation upon their realm.”

Loki grins at this; clearly unrecognized by his own kind as the God of Destruction itself, he notes that the reception is much greater by a distant race of monsters than by that of his own family, who have known Loki’s name for far longer than forgiveness could allow at this point. Odin, Thor, his mother: all attesting to the fact that Loki is what he has always been – always a snake in foreign skin, always destined to rouse chaos upon the heart of Asgard and watch it crumble under his feet.

Allfather clutches his staff and turns behind the fugitive prince, his momentary silence reminding Loki of the many times Odin had hesitated in his speech – contemplating a better way to get his words out, always diminishing the harsher part of the truth when it was too much to divulge. He thinks back upon it now and remembers the day he slid his hands over that casket – the day his flesh, bleeding blue before his eyes, imparted more of the truth to him without words than his father ever could. He twitches at the memory, gritting his teeth, heat kindling somewhere in the back of his mind; he wants to let these embers spread to flame.

The silence ceases. Odin reclaims a breath.

“In our most recent meeting, the Jotun king has agreed to honor a continuance of tranquility among our peoples – that is, if Asgard accedes to the terms of the agreement.”

“And what terms might those be?” Loki turns, a light smirk deigning his expression.

Then a phrase all too familiar.

“You will remain here, where you have always belonged.”

 _Where you have always belonged._ It reiterates in his head over and over until it is a hum in his ears, threatening to deafen him. _Belonged. Belonged._ He has never belonged. A thousand years of lies, a history of deception and corruption to his name, and Odin calls him back into a room he should have never known only to be handed a phrase he never expected to hear again – because he is certain, now more than ever, that Allfather will be cruel. Will show his true nature. Not fall back into the same lie that absolved his guilt all these years.

_But then_ , Loki thinks, _this is his true nature_. This is true cruelty – to deny Loki the pleasure of his failings. How like Odin.

Allfather stills. “Your mother and I have consulted many the alternative in the hope that you would return to us, Loki,” he says, his tone an attempt to soothe. “Not in body alone, but in heart…”

The Trickster dissents, glaring. “Oh but Allfather, there you are mistaken – for it was here that my heart had consummated the dark.”

And at Loki’s smirk, the God of the Hanged steps forward – silently, slowly, sighing in that familiar repression of the truth.

“Loki, I have called you ‘son’ from the moment I held you in my arms as a babe. I have given you all of Asgard to call your home. I have deemed the same worth in you that I have in Thor, and I have always been proud to love you as my own…”

Loki turns.

“…The day I took you in my hands - a frail, cold body abandoned in the snow – I made a promise to myself and to the people of this realm: that this tiny giantling, shedding his frozen tears as I held him, would serve a greater purpose in the hearts of the Aesir than he ever could in the heart of his father. That those small eyes, red with blood, should turn to green – and give him vision to build upon the empire, to give life where it had nearly been taken from his body. I promised myself this, but the intention dissipated as you grew; it withered with the past-“ Odin sighs- “until it became as dust. And on the day you stood before me, tears falling from your face and searching for the answers you had never known to look for, I knew I had abandoned my promise for far too long…”

Allfather’s brow is heavy with contemplation, and as Loki looks into his visage without a word, he listens as the tone breaks before him, bearing some deep emotion he has never associated in his father. Odin pauses for a moment to look up at him – and before his words follow, the Trickster god gazes into eyes of bound intent.

“Consequently, your disruptions unto Midgard, Jotunheim and Asgard have led me to reassess what I have given you, and resultantly, done to you. As you know, Asgard demands a punishment befitting your crimes; and as you know, Loki, though you are mine, you are not, in many ways, my son. After much consideration, I have given Asgard its answer – and now it is time impart that answer unto you.”

Loki expects recompense – expects Allfather to give him in, turn him over to Earth’s leaders and grant concession to do as they please with him. He expects a hearty punishment – imprisonment, torture for his crimes, an eternal sentencing to be bound and beaten for who he is. He expects a judgment upon him fit for a war criminal, to be recognized for what he has done and the carnage he has effectuated upon Yggdrasil as a God of Chaos. He expects all of what his actions have entreated, in a way, and prepares himself to hear the punishment he knows he is receiving.

But what Loki does not expect, comes at first unclear.

“In two days, Thor will become Prince Regent of the realm. The Jotun have assented to peace under the condition that an alliance be reached; on the throne, Thor will forge that union with _you_ ,” the old man disseminates, and the last words of his speech pass Loki’s ears without confirmation of their meaning: “As his consort.”

Loki stills.

He thinks to call back the sentence in his head – perhaps listening too keenly to the thrum of anticipation in his brain. _As his consort_. It plays over; he can discern nothing.

He frowns, the blood fading from his cheeks. “What?”

Odin’s expression grows rigid. “Loki, the time has come to retrace what has been lost. I called you son when I sought to assimilate you; I cannot call you that any longer. Your place is here – but not as a prince. As something much greater.”

It is the first of many times Loki will feel a churning in him, making him sick with reality. He feels it now, a rising fire – but far past anger, for the knowledge is overwhelming.

The Gallows God steps forward, staring into the prince’s wide eyes. “You are of Jotun blood, Loki: born of two sexes, bred to honor one,” he declares - and places his hand firmly into Loki’s bare collarbone, summoning ancient runes that flow through his veins so naturally.

The God of Mischief trembles suddenly at the touch, the tension forming heavy breaths in his throat – and he feels a rush of magic start to spread, thrumming through him underneath his flesh. A gasp follows from his shock, and he looks down at Odin’s hand to find a transformation taking place: blue lines bleed into his skin, rippling through him before a protest can be registered – and he stiffens there, burning, pulsing, perspiring with sudden heat. The blue crawls up his neck, his face, into the top of his skull and tips of his fingers. And he knows then and there, through his whimpers of abhorrence, that his punishment has begun its reign; this is what awaited him – has always awaited him.

When Odin removes his hand, the rest is a blur to Loki. Allfather clutches Gungnir with angry might and drives his staff into the tiled floor, the resonation of its sound a threat and declaration of his power.

“Come two days, it shall be done,” he exclaims. “You wanted a throne – you have it: as Queen of Asgard.”

And Loki can attest to nothing, feeling so naked beneath his clothes.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: this sex scene is very non-consensual and not so much kinky. It's rape-ish (though I don't know if I would call it rape, necessarily) so be warned if you can't handle sad vaginal first times.

In the two days Loki has to prepare for this forced marriage, he makes it clear that he will have none of it. He protests, puts up a fight as they push him into a bath. They clean him, mend his welts, pour oil along his skin and leave him polished in his beastly Jotun form; he trembles naked in front of the mirror, cursing Odin.

Then the wedding passes. It’s elaborate and crowded by hundreds awaiting the union of Thor and his new bride. When Loki arrives to stand beside Thor, he does his best to stare at his sandaled blue feet, avoiding the eyes of many who were unprepared for the sight before them. Thor looks about the room – anywhere but at Loki – and his face deigns a strangled expression of disgust. Guests jeer and wrinkle their noses in revulsion at him; it’s the ultimate humiliation. Loki contemplates death.

He suppresses the memory as much as he can. Hours later, after the feast has carried on and Loki has had the pleasure of Odin’s blessing, he is lying on his wedding bed, alone and nude beneath elegant sheets. He stares out at the night through the open ceiling; the stars stare back, mocking him.

At the sound of the door creaking open, his cold body goes rigid, breath catching in his throat as he expects it to be his… his _husband_ (he cannot bear to hear the word on his tongue, so unnatural to him).

To Loki’s dismal gratitude, it is only two maidservants. One carries a small, mysterious jar in her hand, placing it on the bed table beside him; the other – to his unnerved discomfort – flattens her hands out along the sheets, folding them back to reveal his naked form. He snatches the bedding from her immediately, covering himself and responding with a glare indignant as fire. She pulls away, fear in her eyes as she looks into his monstrous blood-filled ones. He smirks inwardly; shamed though he may be, he is still the advocate of evil – and expects to be looked upon as no less, even as Queen.

The servant, however, averts the urge to leave. She bends, arm reaching for something under the bed table, and turns to the Trickster with a hint of a mannerly smile.

“Would you like a pillow for your hips, Majesty?” she asks.

Loki tenses.

“What for?” he questions rancorously.

 “When the King breaches… it will make it more comfortable for the bride when he…” She blushes, biding the moment from the indecent thought she can’t finish.

Shame trickles down Loki’s spine as hot wax. He rips his gaze away, staring down upon his alien blue flesh before grabbing the pillow out of the maid’s hands, clutching it against himself in spite.

He shivers as the woman exits his chamber. Forced to lay spread across the bed like an inviting whore, bearing the hideous skin of his Jotun ancestry for all to see: this is Odin’s intimation of punishment. The Trickster shrinks into the sheets beneath him, the pulse of his heart thrumming torturously in his head. He has contemplated escape, sorcery, pleading; even with his magic intact, there is nowhere to flee. Allfather will force this torture upon him, and if not him, the Jotun will assent to the same. His mouth is dry with the inkling of death – and as in death, his life epitomizes before him; he thinks of his days as a lad, of sparring in the fields with his brother, of the days Odin paid ignorance to his gifts of magic, of returning home from battle to be cast in shadow under Thor’s glory, of making mischief in the kitchens, of feeling the searing pain of needles through his lips, of learning scorn, of learning hate, of discovering the truth, of the Chitauri, of Thanos, of his war with the Avengers, of coming home to the same world that rejected him into the darkness all these _eons_ …

It is relentless.

Trapped in this loathing visage, humiliated as a woman – gods, damn him, he knows nothing about this alien form. He cringes at the androgynous flesh between his legs - feels as he sees himself: a monster, freak, man and woman in one, an indefinable beast. He crumples the bed sheets in his tensing fingers, frantically thinking over memories in his head; he has never been touched as a woman – transformed for the sake of trickery, yes, but he has never _bedded_ anyone in his female forms. The only time he had ever _remotely_ stepped over those boundaries was as a horse – and he thinks then of Sleipnir’s conception, of Svadilfari mounting him, of being breached against his better defenses, of sudden, forceful intrusion…

Loki gasps with fury. He is lying naked in wait for his own brother to put his prick inside him and his only dim hope of escaping is to somehow live with this, wait for an opportune moment.

But Loki doesn’t _want_ to wait – doesn’t want Thor anywhere near him let alone in bed.

Perhaps this is a salute to his demise, splayed nude under Asgard’s moon as if it were the serpent dripping venom into his eyes. He is powerless here. Bound.

He tosses the pillow away.

The door opens again and Loki cannot bring himself to look. He trembles, biting back the fear he wasn’t cognizant of until Thor entered the room. His eyes glance toward the window; perhaps he can magick himself into a bird and fly away. He is sure Odin had the room prepared to combat such hindrances. This isn’t the time to test his limits.

_Damn him._

He shifts his gaze toward his brother, who has his back to him, seemingly fiddling with his tunic. It hasn’t even occurred to Loki until now that Thor might share an equal sense of displeasure in this consummation – and when the Thunderer turns, a glower gracing his features, Loki is sure he must feel the same.

Thor takes crucial interest avoiding Loki’s eyes. His face is hardened with vexation, and as he makes his way around the bed in a cruelly slow pace, Loki notes the slight shaking of his hands. Thor’s eyes are red and he cringes, pacing about in silence.

Loki’s patience wanes. The concentration of their uneasy breaths devours the room in absence of any other sound, and he cannot bear it; nor, however, can he bear to break the silence. He motions to sit up – and in a strange instance of vigor, Thor leans over him, dictating Loki to lay back with an impeding hand.

The Trickster stiffens, eyes wide and glaring up at him. Thor pulls back, fingers beginning to work at the fastenings of his clothing. Loki watches as the tunic slides from Thor’s broad shoulders, undershirt next – and suddenly the room is very hot around his cold flesh, suffocating him in dread. This is happening now – really, _truly_ happening, and Thor is moving quickly without a word of condolence or regret, an ambiguous grimace painting his features that Loki cannot decrypt. He thinks it to be anger, and the denotative child inside him is suddenly very frightened, remembering Thor’s wrath upon those who come in combat with him.

Then he realizes: this is a war. Thor’s disdain for this marriage – for abiding Odin’s will to do this to him – has called him into battle with himself, a battle he cannot win nor lose as his consent bears no weight against Allfather’s decision. He is a prisoner, like Loki.

The God of Mischief feels his blue skin prickle. Dim candlelight flickers against it, painting his half-revealed form in red and gold.

In silence, Thor climbs into bed atop Loki. The Trickster god squirms immediately in protest; he raises his leg between them, separating them – but Thor presses against Loki, pulling the Liesmith’s legs apart with a force he hadn’t anticipated. Loki shudders. _Why – why is he doing this? How can he do this, simply succumb to Odin’s orders and mount his brother like an animal?_

Loki looks into his eyes, searching; Thor looks away – and the Trickster sees tears welling for the first time. Thor’s brows are furrowed, his youthful face ruined over by chafed, distressing lines. The Thunder god grits his teeth. Loki watches him warily, wide-eyed with shock. He raises his arm in dissent; Thor snatches it immediately – and then pulls it back softly, repressing his rage. Loki stays still.

Then everything comes too fast.

The God of Thunder bears his weight over Loki, pushing himself between Loki’s bare legs.

The Trickster starts to breathe faster.

Thor reaches for the jar on the bedside table, unhinging it and dipping his fingers inside, revealing the content to be some sort of oil. Spreading a dab of it onto his hand, he pulls the sheet away with the other – then to Loki’s shock, Thor’s hand reaches between his legs and cups him, roughly, sliding his limp cock to the side in favor of his…

“Ah!” Loki squirms, feeling the hot hand against his sensitive new flesh, burning him in this cool form.

What Loki has been informed is a quim, Thor spreads the oil along and removes his hand with the same immediacy, his blunt touch leaving his dark-haired brother paralyzed.

Thor loosens his belt. Loki tries to close his legs, but alas, Thor’s weight is suffocating. Then, under the candlelight and shadows of evening, the Thunderer frees his cock, thick and long and half-hard in his hand. Loki sees its measure, even in the dark; he whimpers.

He makes to break away, but Thor comes to rest atop him, chest-to-chest, pink Aesir flesh against Jotun gray. Thor slides his arm between Loki’s shoulder and the pillow, pulling him flush against Thor’s skin; Loki does not respond to the touch. He lays there struggling a moment, the Thunderer holding him tightly – not in a comforting way, nor in a gesture of malice.

They still against each other, and Loki’s body reluctantly succumbs, mind screaming. He remains limp as if lifeless, Thor’s beard scratching against his neck uncomfortably.

Then Thor shoves himself in.

Loki sees red.

Pain engrosses the Trickster deep inside, a sharp throbbing from his lower back to the insides of his thighs. A cry – strangled and sudden – escapes his lips. He clenches the sheets in his hands with spastic haste – a connotation to the way his cunt clenches around the unwelcome intrusion. He shakes with horror, Thor’s hold on him unyielding.

The pace is relentless. Loki is dry, unprepared from Thor’s brief stroking, and the pain leaves him disenchanted from any attempt to arouse. Not that Thor does; he thrusts inside him rigorously, crushing him into the sheets in an angry passion, loveless and filled with resentment.

Loki whimpers under his grunting, sweating brother, repressing his sobs; eyes wide, he manages a glance, only to find Thor shedding his own tears in abandon. He doesn’t want this – _doesn’t want this!_

The Trickster chokes, lamenting.

Thor keeps his eyes strained shut, face buried in Loki’s shoulder. Loki is sure - through his strangled cries of pain - that Thor cannot bear to look. _How can he_ , forced into bed with a monster, his once-brother, a traitor to all of Asgard and enemy to his beloved Earth? This is a living hell for Thor and he’s making it known, tears falling from his eyes onto Loki’s icy skin.

Loki turns his head away, quivering.

Then Thor breaks suddenly – groans harshly into his brother’s shoulder, lunging his hips into Loki’s brutally. His seed fills Loki and the Trickster gasps, eyes wide with dreadful acknowledgement.

Candles flicker around their bed – an altar for lovemaking, the substance of its promise dead as Thor and Loki lay upon it mournfully.

Thor collapses atop his raven-haired Queen, shivering with sweat and wailing. The wordless Trickster god lies there under him, barely panting for breath in his state of shock. The moment has fled, irreversible, and as Thor sobs against his breast, Loki cannot endure the truth – trembles in its power, as a God of Lies does best. His blood-red eyes well red with tears, and his choking gasps come as an allusion of his body:

Broken.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm being serious when i say odin ships it

His eyes embrace sleep with reluctance. Thor does not stay.

The following day, Loki is thwarted into this new life with revulsion.

In the morning, he awakes to the snapping of his bones. A dull ache descends from his spine to his hips, and the insides of his thighs burn with a ripping sensation when he rises. All results of his brother.

He commends Thor with dismal sarcasm; he’s given Loki a trophy shelf in battle wounds, why not surprise him with a few new bruises to add to the record?

Turning back toward his wardrobe, he bitterly thinks to get dressed – and opens the doors, only to find an empty closet. Loki frowns; how does Odin expect him to leave the room? He is nude in naught but a robe over his shoulders.

 _Perhaps this is part of the punishment,_ he considers. Perhaps he is confined to his chambers, like some sort of concubine.

He shrinks with repugnance. But then the door to his room slides open and a maid shifts in, stepping aback and covering her eyes modestly at Loki’s unclad presence.

“My Queen.” She curtsies, and the Trickster wants to wring her neck at the title. “Allfather expresses permission for us to help you dress.”

Loki steps forward as two young servants shuffle in beside the woman, arms weighted with layers upon layers of folded garments – materials shimmering luxuriously in the dark god’s eye. They lay the garbs across his bed, and Loki cringes, peering at his new clothes with distaste: gold silken robes embellished with metal and fine trim. They diminish him, the maidenly luster and fabric opprobriating to a former prince.

He attests to Odin’s demand, but more servants come and pull him back, forcing him to endure. They set a bath for him, pouring rose oil into the water and rubbing him in it; trickles of rust-red blood fade into the water between his legs, and he grits his teeth in shame, cursing Thor. The servants wash him lightly, wary of his stark Jotun appearance, then dress him swiftly, fastening regal jewels around his neck and wrists.

When Loki turns to the mirror, he hates everything he sees, everything he is. The robes drape long onto the floor, sitting across his shoulders with elegance – a _woman’s_ elegance. He is now fully condemned to this role, attire and jewels to prove it. A maid strokes his hair in place and lines the rim of his eyelids with something dark and “flattering” (she pegs the word loosely, and Loki glowers as she takes her leave).

The Trickster wanders his way across the hall, silent and belittled.

 

When he arrives at breakfast, Odin is awaiting him. The old man’s eyes are on him as a master to its hound, and Loki, the disobedient pet, must abjectly take his seat beside him or else be scourged with humility.

Loki’s gaze traces the room, eyes on his mother from across the table; Frigga briefly acknowledges him before glancing down, lips pressed in silence. He thinks to do the same, resentment boiling in him. Perhaps he should try to ignore his surroundings; perhaps that will sustain him from going mad.

The harsh resonance of boots walking lifts him out of his apprehensive thoughts, and though Loki cannot bring himself to turn, he suspects the owner of those footsteps before he stomps his way into the room. Thor’s form raises a shadow beside the Trickster, his broad stance tense. Loki shakes briefly at his brother’s presence, flickers of last night’s horrid memory recounting in his head.

He sips his honey-laden milk in stillness, eyes on the table in front of him.

The Thunder god mutters a stolid greeting to his mother, turning to Allfather with his head low and mouth a stern line.

“Father,” he bows, humbling. But Loki knows he is far from complacent – had seen the extent of his displeasure when Thor pinned his weight down on him and displaced his rage upon Loki’s body, leaving the Mischief-monger trembling with hatred for his father.

Odin looks up at his son with motionless eminence. “Come, sit.”

Thor complies, hands tensing unnoticeably in the eyes of all but his brother. Loki shifts uncomfortably next to him, gaze averted. Then Allfather raises an expectant brow, gesturing to the Thunderer with urging.

Frigga notices, tilting her head up. “Thor,” she intimates, “your _Queen_ – greet your Queen.”

Loki grows rigid in his chair, half-awaiting the indication with dread, but not expecting it from his mother’s lips. Thor turns to him, and he feels an unpleasant shiver ride up his spine, eyes wide with grueling self-restraint.

“Good morn,” Thor says to him, sullen, detached. The Trickster nods stiffly, eyes never meeting his.

But Odin isn’t contented. He raises his chin, gaze shifting between Thor and Loki before his persistence returns with vengeance; Loki feels himself sicken.

“Kiss your wife,” the Allfather bids.

Loki can feel Thor stiffen without even a glance. The Thunderer clenches his hands into fists at the demand, body tense with objection. He looks at his parents in astonishment – with reproaching words on his tongue, Loki suspects – but does not speak.

 _Kiss your wife_. The Trickster’s blood seethes. _Odin can pull the strings; but wives poison their husbands in their sleep._

With strained reluctance, the Thunder god turns, leaning over Loki in the mere space between them. His brow is heavy and his eyes are shut, and Loki spurns his closeness with a cold turn of his head. Thor’s lips brush his cheek – barely so – and retreat with dispassionate effort, huffing a sigh into Loki’s neck.

Thor withdraws himself then, pushing back the chair and exiting the room without a word.

The family is silent.

Odin seems content.

 

The hours saunter by and Thor is nowhere to be found (Loki prefers it this way, as Allfather can’t use him as a means of humiliating the Trickster). Loki endures the day under nauseating constraint; forced to stand in front of courtsmen and bystanders in his abhorred blue visage, listening to their political blather while they gape at him perversely. His silence and austere posture encourages their rudeness; when Odin isn’t watching, they whisper demeaning things:

_If a Jotun bleed, should it not turn to ice?_

_Do Jotun alternate between King and Queen when it pleases them?_

_For one who is half maiden, I see no breasts to prove it._

Their disparaging conversations raise demons in Loki’s mind. He would slaughter them – painfully, slowly – if he were not confined in the presence of Allfather and hundreds of guards throughout the palace. He represses the urge to kill them, collecting his train of robes and departing in silence.

The day retires and Loki returns to his chambers, unrelieved.

Thor tramples his way into the room, his nonvocal grimace stressed under the flickering candlelight. By the time he enters, Loki is already tucked beneath the sheets of their bed, actively averting his presence with a wordless glare; his grip is vengeful on their bedding, covering his nude form completely up to his neck.

He ponders the night’s contingencies. Perhaps Thor will try for another bout of self-reproachful sex. Perhaps he loathes their marriage too much to touch Loki again.

The Trickster is content to let Thor die in his sleep, if so be it.

The Thunder god paces around their bed – just as he did the night before – and Loki tenses at his fumbled muttering. Perhaps he is going insane; Loki cannot blame him.

Then Thor is yanking the sheets away and the Trickster is jolting, his fear of his brother’s rage as intensive as the strike of lightning that follows it.

But instead, he turns away.

Loki exhales.

Thor hastens to their window, unlatching it open, peering out into the wide seas in the distant landscape – the night, the glimmering half-bridge.

“Get dressed,” he tells him assertively. “Get dressed and get out. You’re free to go.”

Loki pauses.

“Under what order?”

Thor does not answer. He keeps his eyes forward at the open view, and when he turns back to the Trickster, he gestures pressingly. “ _Go_ – where are your clothes?”

“I haven’t any,” Loki imparts with a shrug. “Your father made it his priority to dictate everything I wear.”

Thor grunts. “I’ll lend you mine.”

There is something conspicuously heady about the Thunder god’s mood. His brother has always been blunt and brutish when irritated, yes, but why the sudden effort to be rid of…

 _Ah_. At first it is unclear to Loki; then it is very clear.

The Trickster works up a chilling, resonant chuckle from the back of his throat. It is the first time he has legitimately found anything so _meritable_.

“What do you smirk?” Thor gnarls.

“Oh, Thor, my _husband_ ,” the Liesmith mocks, clenching his abdomen with cruel mirth. “So _noble_ , such _exercise_ of virtue! Such self-respect – that you would cast your Jotun bride into the uncertain threats of the realm, just to keep your good name. Disregard the damage, abandon the conscience – let Loki be found a dirty defiant runaway before taking him to bed as your chained consort!”

His spews of bitter bile urge Thor forward, glaring at the Trickster with gritted teeth. He makes to answer – but Loki knows him better, watching him squirm from within at the truth. They’ve been here before; Thor’s eyes tell him everything.

“This is Odin’s son,” Loki imputes ruthlessly. “The great God of Thunder, King of the realm, all-righteous, humble before his duty to Asgard. But married to a wicked wretch – no, no, we can’t have that.” He flicks his tongue along pointed teeth. “Have you even considered the consequences of disobeying Allfather’s decree?”

“I am freeing you of this humiliation!”

“That’s a lie and you know it.”

Thor growls at him, averting his eyes in restrained bitterness. This is inner turmoil – the kind of chaos Loki loves to rouse, and half-has the gall to despite their detaining predicament. There is a part of him that would believe Thor – knowing his love, even if its rationale is selfish at heart; yet the fact alone stands that Thor _is_ selfish – no matter the effort, no matter the end result that could grant Loki freedom.

 _But then_ , Loki remembers, _freedom is a lie_.

He throws a candle at Thor and hopes it burns him whole.

They disregard speaking for the remainder of the night. Loki storms out - seizes his brother’s chamber for himself with hellraising defiance toward any guard that seeks to stop him. Alone and locked in with the world shut out, he is contented enough to sleep.

And dream of darkness. And nothing.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the long wait! I have returned and will be updating as much as possible now.

“You will bear children,” Odin tells him the following afternoon. The Allfather’s fingers twitch around Gungnir, and he turns away in silence, leaving the Trickster to burn in his own indignation.

So Odin means to make him a vessel.

Loki spends the hours in contemplation, cursing, pacing about the floor when the halls are empty and he is alone with the voices in his head; they whisper:

_You are the hand that executes your own fall. Your judgment clouds you with the will to hang on – but you must fall, Loki, for falling is the only way you can belong to yourself once more._

After a while, he breathes in with a final regard for his surroundings. _There must be a way out_ , he thinks, and he heads back to Thor’s chamber with haste. If he does not find one, he will make one. There are endless doors in Loki’s knowledge, and with all his strength still gathered, he can conjure one up.

He flicks his wrist once, testing his own blood. To his surprise, he finds the magic that once flowed through his veins so naturally depleting, the runes of seidr dying under his blue flesh as if dust. He tries again, and again, and once more, but the magic ceases to respond upon call.

_No!_

He manages to trigger one spell – a tiny spitting flame – but it just as soon burns out beneath his cold Jotun touch.

Loki falls to his knees, a chain of curses falling from his tongue. His magic is useless to him now, capable of no more than the smallest of necessities. He is pitiful, weak. He hates weakness; weakness is as mortality – and he is a god, damn the Allfather, a _god!_ He is not a vessel. He is not a queen. He is a man, an apotheosis of destruction in every right, and he will spit upon the Allfather’s dead corpse one day for this.

He leans into himself, a dreadful realization filling him.

He has fallen, indeed, but the voices in his head give no comfort. _Yet_ \- he contemplates when his anger fades and all that remains is the emptiness of what he is - _how far can one fall, without breaking in pieces?_

He thinks of stars, of open black space, and the night he slipped into the wormhole. He met himself, there - in the solitude he had always known to be a friend. Father gave him lies, but solitude gave him truth. And the truth itself, Loki knows, is that he was always _empty_ , more than space and darkness combined.

For the first time, Loki is reminded of what it is to fear. Horror confronts him where he had suppressed it for so long, for he _is_ a vessel - an empty shell. And shells, indeed, do break.

All he requires is to fall.


	6. Chapter 6

Thor finds himself in seclusion. There was a time he could hold his head high, embrace all walks of life whether it were friend, foreigner, danger or truth. These days, his head is low, averting the gaze of any who should pass him. He confronts truth without regret. He embraces change with every step closer to becoming worthy of Asgard’s rule. He has suffered through blindness, and he has found peace through new eyes - a better, wiser sense of being.

Yet he is not that man today. He is feeble and clenching, plagued by a sickness of self-reproach and uncertainty.

He prefers solitude, as he did the days he mourned Loki. _Yet_ , he ventures somewhere in his mind, _I am still mourning_.

_Why?_

He avoids confrontation. His friends watch him from the corner of their eye when they pass him, faces riddled with concern. They try to approach him, persistent with worry, but he deflects their company, returning to the darker places of Asgard’s halls where he can be alone with himself. Fandral will break on occasion, storming forward with both love and the mind to slap him - but Hogun and Volstagg pull him back, nonetheless perturbed as they watch Thor leave.

It pains him to turn away - pains him that he should be like this in their presence, where once he could confide in their brotherhood without a second thought. _But then_ , he is reminded, _this is a matter of blood_ ; he could not involve them even if he were selfish enough to do so.

And then once more, as with every moment, he is reminded of Loki.

Loki is not Thor’s blood; the fact repeats itself in his head, like a little voice, over and over until it becomes his father. Father did this to them - brought them together, gave them a bond for life, then took it away with a flick of his wrist. It’s as if one could organize stars - then one day, realign them, without the consent of the universe and its values. Thor understands the truth of value, how essential one thing in life becomes to another; he paid the price for that lesson dealing with the Jotun.

Yet, this marriage between them - it is just the same as what he had come to learn from Jotunheim. Thor had placed value in brotherhood - only to have it, one day, overridden by the Allfather’s decree.

As if he could rewrite the universe.

As if Thor and Loki were gold weight, there to be placed wherever necessary to balance the scale.

“I crossed the Nine Realms to bring my brother home,” he pronounced to Odin the day they were forced to marry. “Criminal or no, I have sworn him as my _blood_. What order of nature stopped you from understanding that?”

Allfather stood stolid with his staff in hand, mouth an unmoved line. “He is a son of Laufey. His brothers have found it in their interest to...”

“ _Am I not his brother?_ ”

“You are his husband.” Through all of Thor’s protests - echoing off the walls in anger - Odin only turned away. “It would be best to start acting like it.”

He took Loki in their bed that night, his outrage boiled down to numbness. Nothing could be changed; nothing could be prevented. Words fell slack from his lips, and somewhere dark and unapproached within himself, he thought of killing Loki. Freeing him. But he didn’t - too weak to face that darkness, too weak to disobey Odin.

He supposes his sickness had roused from that night. He hates himself with every fiber of his being; never had weakness created such a _beast_ of him. He cannot face Loki - not after his actions.

_I crossed...the Nine Realms..._

He feels he has broken a promise, to himself and Loki and all of the stars he swore upon. A promise he never proclaimed with words, but deeply transcribed into his veins long ago.

“I will return,” he promised Jane Foster.

But for her, he did not call upon incalculable sorcery. For her, he did not fly through worlds to find his beloved Earth again. He risked her love, his friendship with mankind, and his dignity with Asgard, all for Loki.

_“Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard...and he is my brother.”_

Yet Loki is neither truly of Asgard, nor Thor’s brother. It is the most painful criticism upon both of their lives together, and now, they are united in the way a sun and moon should never cross. And just as the Sun under an eclipse, Thor is forced to endure the darkness.

So in the darkness he stays, alone in the empty halls, averting his father, Loki, his new life in marriage. He makes himself ill, hearing Loki’s words play over in his head:

_“Disregard the damage, abandon the conscience - let Loki be found a dirty, defiant runaway before taking him to bed...”_

Thor tells himself it’s a lie; his brother has always fed on vulnerability.

_I only wanted to free you. I wanted you here, home with me - but not like this. I would have given anything to bring you back; but I would rather you leave Asgard, leave me, than suffer like this._

Loki wants him to believe different - that he is selfish, afraid of his dignity dissipating by marrying a Jotun.

_Yet, did I not risk all the dignity I had for you?_

_Did I not run to you atop that tower, pleading you to come back with me, even when you had wrought war and bloodshed upon Midgard?_

_Did I not abandon the risk of trust, put aside my own allies’ values, just for you?_

Thor contemplates, over and over. Loki betrayed him, lied to him, rejected his pleas, stabbed him, fought him, and even in defeat, looked in Thor’s eyes with no remorse for a brother’s love. But Thor could never be selfish with him, not after a thousand years of neglecting the truth Loki spun in his lies.

No, he can’t be selfish.

He’d have Loki - Jotun, criminal, traitor, or no - because he loves him. In raw, simple truth, Thor loves him.

Alone in a corridor, Thor recalls Odin’s words:

_“You are his husband...it would be best to start acting like it.”_

It strikes him, then - frighteningly, as the thought seems so unnatural at first - that he is destined for Loki, for no matter the state of the universe, they are adversaries of completion.

“There is only the war,” Loki had said. He beckoned Thor into becoming his opponent.

Yet, life has changed for them now. They are no longer at war, but instead, at peace - a union to right the wrongs. It doesn’t matter to Odin how they come together, but that they are both existent for each other. Ragnarok will realign the universe someday, but Loki will come back, and Thor will find him again. Stars change; fate remains.

 _Change is good_ , Thor reminds himself. _The new is good_.

He doesn’t want to lose his brother. But then, perhaps he must lose in order to gain. He lost everything once, and awoke with new wisdom.

 _Change is good_.

Loki is not his brother, and for the first time, Thor accepts it.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and nowww, we should proceed with plot. sorry for the metaphorical onslaught.


	7. Chapter 7

Night comes, though he’s hardly aware of time in his preoccupied solitude. Thor makes his way back to his chambers with hesitant steps, knowing Loki will be there.

He means to apologize. How or where to begin, he knows not; but he’ll have to try, for this distance between them cannot remain forever. If he stays in the dark for too long, like Loki, he’ll be wrought with stifled words on his tongue, and eventually burst. Thor was never one to hold back to begin with.

The trouble will be coaxing words out of Loki - and furthermore, apologizing in the knowledge that Loki is still deeply at fault for the destruction he’s done. Thor is about to become very vulnerable, and he knows he cannot. Loki owes many lives, despite everything Allfather has inflicted upon him.

He comes to his own door, a hand rising to knock. And just as so, Loki opens it, wearing naught but a robe and a glare.

“Oh.” The Liesmith perks his head up. “And here I thought you had jumped the Bifrost.”

“I’m not so quick to disappear as you, Loki,” Thor says through his solid composure, Loki flinching when the name resounds off his tongue. “May I come in?”

The Trickster stares indignantly, no doubt resentful of Thor’s soft manner. Thor steps forward, and he looks him up and down before sliding back.

“It is your room,” Loki says, the compliance surprising though sullen and unforgiving. He frowns, looking at nothing as Thor steps inside.

With the door quietly shut, they pace around each other. Thor watches closely as Loki refuses eye contact.

When they were young, more than often Loki kept to himself, silent in contemplation; but upon seeing Thor, his face would brighten and with only dim aversion, he would embrace his brother’s presence. Always smiling, always willing. Thor knows, to his deepest regret, that at one point Loki had stopped smiling so brightly - more than likely, hiding a revulsion that had festered.

He bears a hateful frown now, no trace of the godling that was.

Thor has tried to understand.

_“Whatever I have done to wrong you...to lead you to this...I am truly sorry.”_

Those were his words as he stepped forward in the sand. He stood beneath Loki in that moment, a mortal humbled before the wrath of a god. Just as Loki had always wanted him, immersed in his shadow. He let Loki have the strings, the opportunity to grant mercy or to pull at them. And Loki pulled hard, overtaken by wrath - a viciousness Thor had never found the source of.

He regrets none of this. Yet, in not regretting, a part of Thor is clawing at his knowledge, wanting never to have known the truth. It wants to cloud what it has found, reject the horrible image of Loki that Thor now knows to be real.

He stares at the dark god.

He has reluctantly accepted what he must do now. He is willing to comply with his father’s decision, in the knowledge that whether Loki is his queen or his brother, he can make amends over the long-unspoken divide between them. All he wants, truly, is Loki himself. He wants, so very desperately, to understand.

But comprehension, thus far, has given him an ugly anger - not the frustrated youth he bore, but a death that arose out of knowledge. Thor’s heady temper has long died, replaced by something much harder.

Loki is a horror, and to the same vengeance that showed Thor no mercy, he must yet again apologize. But this time, Loki's slights weren't conjured up on his own. Thor has no choice but to heed him.

The Thunder god stands stolid and hard of brow, waiting for a glance that will not come his way. Loki looks about the room - everywhere but at him - and fiddles with his own hands, as if to ignore the time and place. Thor knows that part of him now, expectant and feelingless; he would gladly devour Thor’s apology and spit it out, hungry to drive the Thunderer to pieces beneath him. He will insult Thor, debase him with guilt, and turn away having reaped the sick reward of that.

Thor knows his game; now he must adjust to playing it right.

“I believe words are in order between us,” he begins. “You have not spoken to me in days.”

“Should I have?” Loki stares off to the side. Candles flicker about, illuminating the hardness of his brow, and the coldness thereof. “Should I have chased the recluse down the halls in my silk train? Should I have run to you for words after our brutal fuck that night?”

“I came to apologize,” Thor injects sternly. “That was not my will toward you.”

“I see. Just following the command of your King.” His tone is a paradox, soft and emotionless in the cold way Thor has grown used to.

“You know I don’t mean it that way, Loki,” the Thunderer says. “Look, there is no atonement I could give that would justify what has been done. I do not expect mercy, just grant me concession to apologize.”

“Concession is all yours,” Loki says resolutely.

Thor’s brow creases, the words hoarse in his throat: “The wrong I have done you, there is no excuse and I am sorry. I would never have consented to father’s orders, nor what he has done to you.”

“Then why did you?” Loki turns, then, finally and bitterly. “You had complete will to speak out against your father, yet you held your tongue. Or, would you have rather taken your brother to bed than be banished again?” His tone becomes as ice, and he adds without remorse: “I thought you preferred to fuck your Earthling girl anyway.”

“That’s not the truth.” Thor grits his teeth. “I told Father. I stood up for us.”

“Not the truth?” Thor can feel the Trickster’s grin before it appears. “Which part, about your brother or fucking the mortal?”

“Will you _stop_ inclining her that way, you-”

“Apology accepted, however ambiguous it was. You can leave, now, Thor.”

And it’s there - there that Thor knows the state of their conversation. If he doesn’t stop it now, Loki will peel away at him until he finds that core of guilt.

Thor can’t have it.

He nearly has the mind to take him by the shoulders, but he stays still.

“This is my room,” he imputes Loki’s words as before.

The Trickster nods, shifting in repugnance. He makes for the door without a word, but Thor stops him, yanks his arm roughly. This is the first time he’s touched him in days, no longer holding back.

Loki hisses, but Thor keeps him there. “That night, I would have freed you. I gave you a chance to run,” the Thunderer says close to his ear.

“After you had already plucked me with seed,” the Liesmith spits. He leans in, tongue as poison. “I may be pregnant with your get as we speak. But you didn’t think of that, did you.”

The Thunderer growls, glaring atop the powerlessness he feels. He didn’t consider it, no, and once again he is bereft of words the way Loki wants.

The Trickster jerks his arm, forcing Thor’s grip away. “Summon your hammer, why don’t you. You’d best kill me if you seek to be free.”

His words leave empty dejection across Thor’s face.

_How could I be free, when you are the reason I mourned?_

Loki reaches a hand toward the door, but the elder god thwarts forward, taking his hand in his own.

“Don’t leave on that,” Thor says, his tone a threat yet divulging a plea.

Loki looks up into his face.

_Stay._

“What promise does this marriage grant us?” the Trickster says, no longer glaring, but still sullen.

_Promise._

_“I will return,” Thor promised Jane. “For you.”_

But he returned to Earth for Loki, to bring back what was lost.

“None,” Thor says to him. “None unless we try.”

Loki bites his lip. “And what does that imply?”

He runs over in his mind what he had before. _Change is good,_ a voice reminds him somewhere. He thinks back to his father, to the words the old man had spoke. There is doubt in his mind, still, but it will pool there only to leave him in a hollow place of questions and feelings. Loki is cruel, deserves every bit of anger Thor has for him, but he can't unleash that now, elsewise ruin everything. He can’t fight a battle when the terms call for peace.

_We’re not at war anymore; we’re at peace._

It's finally registered, and Thor summons the words he’s been meaning to say all night.

“I know neither of us wanted this marriage, but if we keep this distance... there will be no resolve to better it.”

Loki observes him closely, but does not speak.

“We must try to cooperate through this, but I need you to pull your weight. I can’t do it alone,” Thor continues, and the Trickster stares as if in thought.

“Your father said we ought not be brothers,” Loki admits softly, but Thor can tell he is cringing. “That if things played out differently, this union might have existed regardless.”

“Aye,” Thor agrees, and stills a moment, mustering his will. “Loki, for the better of us both, we should bury this repulsion. I will try to be your husband.”

The Trickster nods slowly then, looking into nothing, the hint of a tremble in his lip. “Then I will... t-try to be your wife.”

The answer is nearly shocking.

Loki's face remains a frown, but he exits through the door before an impression can seep. Thor watches as he leaves, wondering, a desolate feeling coursing through him.

_“Whatever wrong I have done...to lead you to this...”_

He hopes in silence that he will not be sorry. That this is not the wrong decision. That there is promise in their agreement, and Loki will not turn to break it.


	8. Chapter 8

When Loki was a younger man, he discovered through a most unkind fortune that love and lust were separate entities.

Brimming with desire for the Vanir beauty Sigyn, Loki courted her unyieldingly, only to receive rejection day in and day out. Mercilessly determined, Loki refused her opposition - and one day, he deceived Sigyn with sorcery into a forced marriage. Allfather discovered Loki’s misdeeds soon after, and the old man saw fit to bind him to Sigyn with shackles. Loki did not understand the punishment then; he wanted Sigyn, and through marriage he had her, regardless of her disdain for him in return.

But, as with all things, there soon came an irony.

After years of this bind, Loki had sated his lust for Sigyn in their bed, again and again, until his fill had been had - and he discovered, like a black ashen hole where a flame once stood, his desire had one day burned out. He had at last grown tired of the woman. To his dismay and regret, lust was the only entity that had fueled him in marriage - and with it gone, there stood nothing. Nothing to sustain the dead flame that once heated his loins.

But that was not the irony.

In time, Sigyn proved a pliant creature. In the beginning, she had woefully agreed to the bond, filled with resent for her new husband. She attended Loki day for day, wandering about at his side, taking what he had given her. And in a shocking turn of events, she had grown to love Loki: sympathetically, wholely, and willfully. She finally attained lust, just as his had died out.

She adored him mercilessly in return. Sigyn’s love grew so strong, it chewed at him until he could bear no more.

And as they sat at dinner one evening, Sigyn folding her hand over his in suggestive longing, Loki at last understood Odin’s punishment.

Never before had he felt so ill.

“Sigyn,” he had addressed her, cringing. Bile formed in the back of his throat. “Tonight, leave me to myself.”

His wife’s brows furrowed with concern. “You do not wish to have me to bed?”

“I am not in the spirit,” he replied icily - but upon seeing her frown, mustered the mind to soften. “Be not dampened, wife. I am simply... riddled with other affairs of late,” he lied. “Have I not given you all?”

“Oh yes.” A smile curved her lips, one that burned him with inner disgust. “You’ve filled my plate with more than I could ever savor.”

“Aye. Then leave me, and have no doubt in my love.”

Sigyn rolled her fingertips along his, then, with such fool-hearted admiration it made his insides churn. “I could never, Loki, even if it _should_ prove doubtful.”

He looked up at her. “Hm? How is that?”

Her words would become his nightmares.

“A wife’s love is infinite,” she explained impassionedly. “Boundless, as should fidelity brand. The more I give, the more I come to never stop.”

She left him breathless and pale, the irony indeed a brand on his chest. He cursed the Allfather that year, and under such curses, demanded divorce. Sigyn plagued him no more after that, her sickening adoration a painful lesson on his insolence.

He lusted after, but never again let it bind him - _never_. And he now knew the substance of love, which in turn, he actively averted.

Averted except for Thor.

 

Loki’s hands are shaky when he wakes, from dreams of emptiness and failure. Days have passed since his last encounter with Thor - a memory he cannot seem to overcome nor accept in his mind.

_“I will...t-try to be your wife.”_

Those were the words on his own tongue that night; he recalls them in their dreadful clarity.

Looking down upon his own blue flesh, it is easy to forget who he is. He is Jotun in this moment, not a man nor son of Asgard. So easy to forget - and as he slips into this repression of the past, he ponders if Thor has somehow done the same. He is not his brother, after all.

The Trickster pulls the sheets back and gets dressed in his new clothes, just as he has this past week. The servants don’t attend him anymore, as he has asked them to fill his closet and depart, for chance that he should be in bed with his husband. It’s, of course, a lie - Thor hasn’t dared come near their bed. He sleeps alone, in the seclusion of his room, and Loki is content to keep it that way for however long they can.

He singles out gold bracers for his wrists and a fine leather suit for his body. The new clothes vaguely resemble his old ones, though trimmed at the waist and thighs so to accentuate his form. They unnerve him, but he endures; the solitude his Queendom entreats has preserved his sanity, to say the least.

Closing the door behind him after dressing, he takes a swift, quiet path down the hall. Recently, he’s found sanctum in the palace library - and so without delay, he heads there to be alone with his thoughts.

The library is dimly-lit and vast, books upon books over his head up to the ceiling. The shelves hold many secrets in them, and Loki places his hands along the bindings of some works, fingertips remembering where they had been once. He read many of these scrolls and books as a child, learning the ways of magic and forbidden arts.

He thinks about his own crippled magic in mourning.

Solitude is the only brightness he has now, ironic in that it is shadows that give him comfort.

He’s pulled out of his musings suddenly by a nudge. A hand touches his wrist - and he flinches back, startled.

“Loki.” A woman stands beside him, blonde hair and fair face concealed under a cloak.

Loki blinks twice, expression wide. He feels a familiar breathlessness - one only brought on upon seeing her.

“Sigyn.”

Just when his predicament couldn't get any worse.

His former wife leans in close to him, and his immediate revulsion returns, just as it did so long ago. Her visit surprises him, no doubt; they haven’t spoken so much as simple words since their marriage ended.

Sigyn’s eyes wander up and down his image fretfully. His blue flesh must be strange to her, if not abhorring - and he ponders with faith if she will run away. “Oh...” She clasps her chin with one shaking hand.

“What are you doing here?” Loki whispers.

“Look at what they’ve done to you,” she observes with dread. “Oh, Loki, how could Allfather have gone through with this? He demeans you like a maiden.”

_Like a maiden? Your husband is a frost giant, yet that is all you notice, Sigyn?_

To his dismay, perhaps she won’t run after all.

She raises a hand to stroke his cheek, fingers brushing the black rim painted along his eye. Loki flinches under her touch, remembering the years of bottled-up disdain she had wrung out of him with those very hands, with her whole body and self. He forces himself not to pull away. He watches her, bereft and cringing as she speaks.

“I have come to help you,” she whispers to him. “I can set you free of this cruelty, once and for good.”

At that, his revilement suddenly falters.

“Sigyn.” He comes closer, heeding her.

“There is a gateway,” she begins to impart, folding her hands over his own (with surprising fervor, as she’s never even laid eyes upon his Jotun form before). “I’ve attained a sufficient amount of sorcery that will lead you away from Asgard - to another realm, where even Heimdall cannot see.”

Loki nods impatiently. “Yes, yes?”

“Tonight, when you are alone in your chamber, gather yourself and come swiftly to the armory. Make sure you are alone. This, and you will meet a mage there who will open the portal - then to your freedom.”

_...Freedom._

“Oh, Sigyn.” He could nearly embrace her, if not for vile memories.

The Vanir clasps his hands tight, pulling them up to her lips to kiss reverently. “I will fail you not.”

“Tonight,” he says over, nodding. Sigyn’s presence may sour his mood, but then, he cares little about her to begin with; this is his final chance to be _free_.

“Tonight. I will see you again, my love,” the woman whispers, and clenching his touch once more, she straightens her hood over her face. “I promise.”

She waves to him excitedly, stepping back into the dark corners of the hall until she disappears from Loki’s sight.

The god watches her exit, pulling his hands back to himself in the aftermath of Sigyn’s kisses. Having felt her lips on him again - so long since she had touched him last - Loki stares at the ground by his feet, and thinks.

He cannot discern the guarantee in her promise. If he risks leaving tonight, he could be spotted at any time. Then again, this is not the first time Sigyn has helped him, even after their divorce; like the true fidelity she ascribed to herself, the Vanir found him many a time in desperate need, and willingly aided him - even at the risk of forfeiture and death. She concealed his guilt, contributed to his crimes, all in the name of her love.

_Good Sigyn did never fail me._

But then - at the memory of her love, a terrible burning rises in his gut. Loki clenches his abdomen, his jittered enthusiasm suddenly shrinking.

“I will see you again, my love,” she had said.

_See you again. See you again._

The sweetness of her words is eerie, revolting. It makes him remember all those years of torment, of making love until her sex sickened him, of enduring her faithfulness to the point of madness, fatigue. _If I follow her word tonight,_ he asks himself, _will she use that debt against me?_

The contradiction of his chances unsettle him.

He returns to his chambers, remaining withdrawn from the outside for hours. Alone with an empty, ill feeling, he contemplates.

His mind recalls love, lust, anger, and resentment. When he thinks of love, the word renders itself into a scale, as if each individual that has ever come into his heart were measurable by weight. _Yet_ , he finds, _the scale is imbalanced_. And the reason seems to speak for itself: _there is only one I have ever loved._

He knows his own heart - knows it well. The day he wedded Sigyn, a trick played the Trickster; his heart was full with lust disguised as love, and he did not discern the difference nor had the mind to care. _But lust_ , he learned, _fills the heart with air. For once sated, desire leaves the hungerer empty still._

 _But then,_ he remembers in dread, _am I not empty, just as sex?_

The Liesmith leans against his side, clutching his cold body as it curls into his bed.

What he has learned from lust, he hasn’t yet took to the practical setting. He repeats his sins, clinging to the faith of end-results like an insane man. Deep within, he knows this behavior; he knows he is mad. _I am a lusting man,_ his mind acknowledges - just before he remembers.

His eyes trace the blue markings across his flesh. _No, I am not a man. Not today._ He is Jotun today, a dual-sexed bride of another man. _But I am empty regardless, for I lust even after it does me ill._

The lust Loki ponders is not all sexual. He has learned from Sigyn that obligations form when bound. Despite his umbrage toward that old marriage, Loki has never stopped lusting - for when he thinks of Thor, lust is the first thing he delineates.

He tricked Thor all through adolescence, lied to him, left him in grave despondency, desecrated his mortal form, led him to destroy the Bifrost, sunk him to his knees before his friends...all to rouse Thor’s anger. It is a sick, masochistic triumph, the more Loki thinks; he has gained nothing but a twice-broken back and tears, yet he would decimate all of _Yggdrasil_ just for another taste of Thor’s wrath.

When he thinks of this thoroughly, Loki cannot suppress a giggle. He is indeed a lusting creature, for like an addict of potions, he has again and again sought the thrill of Thor’s rage. The more and more he considers it, he is indeed _mad_ \- for who of a right mind would seek out pleasure from anger?

It is Thor’s mind he seeks; he is certain of it. It is the reason, all these years, he has lied repetitively. It is the reason he has gained so much from so little, clinging to the face of Thor’s disdain when a country had itself kneeled before his feet.

“I never wanted the throne,” he told Thor in their bout.

_No, I wanted your equality. I belong to you as you to me: your opposer, your shadow._

He knows that being Thor’s shadow is a blessing as much as a curse. Shadows themselves are voiceless imprints of their makers.

 _You are my maker,_ he tells the image of Thor in his mind. _You are the reason I exist: to torment you, to bring you to your lowest, and to rouse you to your strongest, so that you may punish me._

Loki grins to himself at this; he is a masochist, his self-sacrificial opposition as lust. _I have always lusted for you to hate me._

He recalls the day of Thor’s doomed coronation. It was there he felt those four conflictions: love, lust, anger, resentment.

“Never doubt that I love you,” were his words then.

 _Love._ Loki understands the meaning. _It is Thor whom I have loved, eternally and wholely._

Thor. Not Sigyn, nor Odin, nor anyone. He has ever loved Thor, the very soul he hates. _And yet,_ Loki ponders, _is not hate the same as love?_

_Do we not hate the ones who are not like us, simply because we adore them to madness?_

“Madness,” Loki whispers on his tongue, pressing a finger to his lips. He has been accused of madness, and the accusers were right.

 _I am mad,_ he tells himself repetitively. _For I love the one I hate. I hate because I...love._

It is a self-sickening truth. All the years of his forced marriage to Sigyn, he was alone and empty, his lust unsatisfiable in that there was no love behind it. Yet, lusting after Thor, he has never been barren - for the Thunder god is his love, that Loki may lust after again and again until the end of time.

 _I am an empty shell,_ he thought to himself one day. Yet he thinks now there is a solution. In his crooked head, he is a vessel, for which must have a purpose.

_“What is my purpose?” he spat at Odin._

_“I am burdened with glorious purpose,” he told the captain of S.H.I.E.L.D._

He crossed worlds to find meaning - to sate his emptiness with fulfillment. And now, with wide eyes and a trembling mouth, he realizes he has found purpose.

_“I will...t-try to be your wife.”_

“I am Thor’s wife,” he reminds himself - yet he’s never understood it until now. All the effort of chasing Thor’s lust, of imprinting on his heart, of making himself sick with envy - in the end, he knows what he is, and what was meant to be.

_I am a vessel that longs to be filled._

Alone and wallowing in this newfound epiphany, Loki has a choice to make. He can open the door, stride silently to the palace armory, and never see Thor again.

_I revile that Sigyn with all my being. Yet she is the only person I can trust to set me free._

Loki has mused and contemplated for so long now, he doesn’t realize the time. A knock on the door sends him jolting up - and just as so, a maid enters his chamber, bowing her head with hands folded.

“Your Majesty,” she addresses him softly. “Your presence is greatly urged downstairs.”

The Trickster stares at the maid, riddled inwardly with choice. Uncertain and panicked, he gives himself an ultimatum: go with the maid and stay here forever, or come to Sigyn and live a free man.

_Go with the maid, or come to Sigyn..._

He stares and stares, fingers crumpling his sheets.

 

Thor waits for Loki in the golden hall, resting a hip against the wall with arms folded tensely. His mother prods him with unanswered questions, standing adjacent while they wait together.

“You know I would not ask if not for your father,” Frigga imparts in a persistent whisper. “But, sooner or later, he’ll start asking _himself_.”

“Loki and I are well,” Thor replies. The answer is ambiguous, he knows, but it’s the best he can refer.

Frigga huffs, trying her hardest without pestering. “‘Well’ and ‘agreeable’ are two different things. When was the last time you spoke to him, Thor?”

“Days past,” the Thunderer says. “I can’t rouse him when he’s unwilling.”

“ _Is_ he unwilling?” his mother presses, nudging her son’s arm.

“Nay, he’s... Loki is content, Mother, so long as he is left in solitude.”

“Well, _solitude_ does not make a marriage. Have you even discussed...” Frigga pauses there, the hint of her unspoken words in her expression. “...nothing, at all?”

Thor lowers his gaze in indication; _No, Mother, we haven’t discussed children. And most probably, we never will._

“I swear it, Thor, the day your father comes forward demanding heirs, there better be an explanation - and _not_ the one I’m receiving today.”

The Thunderer sighs, looking about elsewhere as his mother’s eyes trace the room.

“Where _is_ he, now?” Frigga says, turning her head. “I called him down a while ago. It’s been too many moments past.”

Atop the stairs, no trace of Loki makes itself known. Thor looks up and ponders; perhaps he’ll never show. Perhaps Loki will disappear behind his room for the remainder of eternity, until their marriage is deemed forgotten.

_Perhaps he does hate us this way, after all._

But just as doubt fills Thor, a shadow appears in the corner. At the very first stair, what looks to be a foot peeks out, followed by a body.

The Thunder god nearly smiles, just in the knowledge that his faith is verifiable.

“You called for me?” Loki inquires, a peculiar, shocking smile spread along his lips. He comes softly down the stairs, that very smile aimed at Thor.

“Yes, yes,” Frigga says, stepping up to greet him. “My son, are you contented in this marriage?” She places her hands on his.

The Trickster nods. A prominent coolness holds his head high - an emotion Thor has not yet seen - and he walks to his husband with a grace that leaves Thor puzzled and bereft.

“I am.” Loki rests his arm in Thor’s, looking into blue eyes with wondrous red ones.

His words, then, are as a strange yet familiar dream.

“A wife’s fidelity should be boundless,” Loki says, the phrase so naturally spoken. “The more I give, the more I shall come to never stop.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we have now entered the twilight zone, ladies and gents.


	9. Chapter 9

Change comes, slow and faltering and subtle.

When Thor arrives at breakfast, Loki is already seated at the table beside his parents. To his surprise, Loki greets him with a smile - actually greets him - before turning back to his meal. It seems a small and inconspicuous gesture, not particularly notable, yet Thor notices it immediately. He looks into Loki’s blood-suffused eyes, noting that they glimmer under his lashes with unusual calm. The Trickster holds his head high with grace, and Thor’s gaze traces the inward curve of his spine behind the chair - the pride in his erect back. It has been too long since Loki has advertised such pride, and the image fills the Thunderer with as much concern as curiosity.

“A wife’s fidelity should be boundless,” Loki had said the night before.

It was strange enough to see him smile, let alone assent his tongue to state such words.

Allfather and Frigga address their son mirthfully, no doubt pleased with Loki’s placid mood. Thor takes a seat beside the black-haired Queen of Asgard, his newly spirited wife not returning a single glance afterward. But Loki smiles - just as he did that night on the stairs - and it leaves Thor to ponder for the remainder of the day.

In the week that follows, Thor grows accustomed to the quiet glances Loki gives him.  He observes him in silence, wondering what has overcome his brother - until he remembers:

_“I will...t-try to be your wife.”_

It takes a moment, but Thor soon is smiling to himself, filled with new respect for Loki’s accession. He begins to return his glances with gratified enthusiasm.

They fall into a rhythm of exchanging subtle smiles, bowing their heads in acknowledgement, and on occasion, gracing each other with light touches - the brush of their hands, the small squeeze of a shoulder. Day for day, they begin to slip between the silent recess that has divided them.

They cross paths more often, in the library, on the stairs, in the quiet halls. Loki’s avoidance gradually becomes quiet "hello's"; he rediscovers, after so long, what it is like to feel the light of Thor's presence. In turn, the Thunderer draws an understanding: though not his brother, Loki has returned to him, the smiling young sorcerer that Thor had so longed to see again. The knowledge satisfies him, relieves him.

They indulge each other briefly through the day, returning to their separate chambers in the evening with polite “good-bye’s”.

After three weeks and a pleased smile gracing Odin’s lips, they gradually succeed in tolerance. Allfather bows his head to them as they pass, silent and grateful - though there is one expectation still glinting in his eye. Thor knows what his father is awaiting day after day, holding back for the preservation of his new relationship with Loki. He doesn’t want to lose him - doesn’t want to risk their peace.

But one evening after a week of Thor’s hesitance, it is Loki who wills a further step.

He draws Thor to the candle-lit darkness of his room. Thor keeps silent as he walks in, pacing behind Loki as the Jotun folds his hands.

“I am willing to accede to Odin’s terms,” Loki says softly, cooly. “Provided, of course, you are willing to do the same.”

He speaks as if offering a deal. He leans relaxed against a bedpost, watching Thor behind lowered lashes. His expression is one soft and composed, neither a frown nor a smile. He is as Thor remembers him: quiet, temperate, and cold.

Yet even as he is cold, he has just presented an agreement Thor never imagined he would submit to fulfilling.

The Thunderer nods. “We agreed we would comply,” he says in a low voice. “Father is pleased with us, I think.”

“Quite so.” Loki lowers his gaze, twiddling fingers in thought. “I spoke with him this morning.”

“And?”

“He is very insistent on making peace with the Jotun.”

Loki pauses there a while. Thor notes a slight twitching in his hands, that he does not look at him even in his silence.

Thor steps forward, breaking the silence.

“And what are their terms?” he asks.

Loki remains still. “I presume that you already know.”

Thor folds his own hands to his waist, turning away with a small nod of the head. He looks down at his hands, trifled with thought.

“Elsewise, I would not have brought you here,” the Trickster adds lightly.

“You are giving me a choice?” Thor says, tilting his head up again.

Loki steps around his bed. “I do not believe there is much of one.”

His tone is collective, unenthused yet lacking the venom that ought be there. At least, Thor _believes_ it ought be there - he never knew Loki to accept what was handed him. He is, after all, the Trickster god: Loki would always work his way _around,_ no matter how low the standards of his dignity,before he _bent_. No, Loki would never bend; this creature is simply not Loki.

Yet Thor observes him closely, his new posture of grace in this Jotun skin. He is so _different_ in that he is the same: a contradiction that riddles the Thunderer to no end. He cannot help but wonder if Loki has forgotten himself. It’s alien and dissuading to see him like this, yet Thor has welcomed it all this passing time. Loki has somehow maintained a _contentment_ , strange and new. It concerns Thor, yet eases him, and now, he is willing to go further than they promised.

And yet they _did_ agree to comply; that was the cause for this sudden peace.

But now, Loki has instilled a fear in him: that Thor cannot acquiesce beyond certain bounds.

In simple words, Loki means to abide Odin; even simpler, he means to bear Thor’s children.

It’s an awkward predicament altogether, and not one Thor is certain he can place upon Loki. It disturbs him that Loki should accept it - even more so that he should request it. Here now, in his chamber, Loki has done just that.

He is cool and complacent in his speech, expression unmoved as though to say, “Let be what shall be”. He has no doubt thought this over, cringing to weariness day and night. Thor is certain he must feel objection - for if not, he is bereft of understanding Loki altogether.

Yet, perhaps he does not understand. Perhaps he knows very little about Loki, indeed. And it frustrates him, unnerves and boils him, that he can hardly see Loki now, beneath this rough indigo hyde and these eyes filled with blood.The Jotun Loki terrorizes his every belief, his every memory, because indeed Thor cannot see him clearly - cannot see the empty jealous vacuum of those once-green eyes, cannot see the face of lies under all his grooves of Jotun heritage. He cannot see what is truth and what is illusion, when now they are interbred confusingly under Odin's law. Thor is afraid in this, that what he didn't know once, now he will never know.

If Thor did not know Loki all his life, he would be as a stranger.

And now, more than ever, he _is_ a stranger.

...But that isn’t bad.

 _No,_ Thor thinks to himself, _no, it isn’t bad. Change is good._

Change has allowed them to reconnect - slowly and with little words between them, but nonetheless, they have rediscovered something lost. Perhaps they needed it - perhaps _Thor_ needs it. Perhaps he needs this Loki: Loki of blue flesh and ruby-washed eyes, Loki who will speak of peace and put aside ills, Loki who does not lie and seclude himself into an incomprehensible shell, locking Thor out without mercy for both their hearts.

Perhaps he is desperate enough to need this. Perhaps there is no ulterior choice but to believe that.

Thor can leave this thought to linger in his head, but for the meantime, he must keep to himself. There is no sense in words or the impulse to object - not when Loki is so assenting in his withdrawn, puzzling composure. Words could consequent great damage, and so rarely intimate and soft is their conversation now, Thor would rather remain silent.

Thus, he comes to the question at last: can he perform what Odin expects of him?

Loki tilts his head and watches him from the other side of his bed all the while, as Thor ponders just that.

The answer should be simple: he is Loki’s husband; in Odin’s words, he should act as such. He should comply upon command as he has agreed to do, and he should ignore his doubts in favor of the realm. He is soon Asgard’s King, with Loki as Queen, and Asgard’s expectations are no less than that of his father’s.

He does not know how long and how much Odin has pressed Loki into doing this. Thor simply knows Loki is handing him the reins, sitting across his bed with that reserved expression in his blue face. And Thor must either take them now and drive, or shy away back to his chamber. Either way, the obligation will come back again - as Loki is to conceive an heir, whether tonight or two weeks from now. Thor can wait until the waiting runs out, but he knows that small part of him will never cease to be afraid.

And so the answer stands: he’ll walk over, and perform. He will suppress his fear of memories, and he will forget the Loki that is peachy skin and green eyes. He can forget temporarily, because there is no ulterior choice.

When Thor steps over to Loki’s side, the Trickster with smally trembling hands allows his robe to fall from his shoulders. They do not face each other, simply slip into bed together with hesitant, light brushes of clothes and skin. Thor only unlaces what is necessary, pressing Loki against the sheets without looking into his face.

And through the night, Thor doesn’t look at all. He keeps his face pressed in the crook of Loki’s neck, laying over him with eyes lowered to his breast.

Loki lays straight, neither rigid nor relaxed, his legs spread only slightly. His back is flat against the mattress as Thor moves. His ink-black hair splays along the pillow under his head, and his eyes stare up - up into the ceiling, facing stars and black night through clear glass. Candlelight flickers, forming shadows, and he thinks: _how is it that Thor can rise to endure this, when once he inflicted so much pain in this same bed?_

He recalls his own wailing and muffled tears, his choking gasps as he let his wedding night commence. It was he that allowed his own pain from not fighting - and yet, it seemed useless to fight, as it was not he who had taken up a battle. He watched Thor cry, shed his tears all over his icy breast. There was no battle on his part, no - it was Thor who waged war against himself.

Yet Thor is solid and quiet now, acquiescent to this act. Loki finds it intriguing as it is dull - that Thor should shed no tears upon this old battleground.

Perhaps Thor is a silent mourner, and perhaps Loki doesn’t care to know. He has nothing to fear in a quiet Thunder god.

He lies beneath him and listens to the breath against his ear. He listens to his heartbeat, steady and unrushed as their coupling is slow. Thor is almost gentle, too soft - perhaps avoiding his past mistake. He keeps his head down with his wordless mouth, and it allows Loki to concentrate.

Breathing even and lying still, the Trickster takes in his body with small, cautionary tension. The feelings outwardly are familiar: Thor’s strong, broad weight, his flesh pressing into Loki’s. Thor’s warmth sinks in and atop him, just dousing without drowning him in it. His movements are light, and Loki can grow accustomed without being forced to embrace them.

Loki’s eyes meet his blonde tresses, as that’s all he can see with Thor’s head turned away. He engulfs the slow pace and adjusts, feeling the ease of a member sliding in and out.

It’s an alien feeling, at that: the walls of his womb pushing and pulling gently. Penetration is smooth, aided properly by oil. Unlike his dreadful first time, this sensation is new. It’s painless yet pleasureless, and though he cringes at submission, he bears it.

He is content enough not to revile sex.

Thor heaves mildly, and it is over. His climax leaves a red tint to his cheeks, and he gathers his clothes before exiting the room. He leaves without a word, but Loki knows he isn’t being cold. He is simply averting nostalgia - and they _both_ are, for the sake of themselves.

Loki falls asleep, no glower, no smile. He has done his work and there is nothing to dwell on or fear.

He dreams of blackness and hollowness, and his hand rides up between his thighs in the midst. It unconsciously rests there until the morning, and he awakes to find it with strange intrigue.

 

In the night that follows, they try again.

Thor bears his weight over Loki and keeps his head nestled in Loki's shoulder. The Trickster settles into the straight position underneath him and resumes feeling, resumes adjusting. He ignores that part of himself which repulses, finding it endearing - if not amusing - that Thor avoids their coupling so tensely. It’s as if he hides in Loki’s breast, willing the moment away in his mind.

 _But he can’t hide forever,_ Loki thinks in their silence, and a wee thrill - a tiniest ember - flickers inside of him.

In the meantime of their dull union, Loki returns his attention to his own body. Slick again after being rubbed with warm oil, his inside stretches with fullness and contracts with emptiness. He once embraced pleasure with men, allowed himself to be taken; but that was nothing comparable with this new sensation. He feels his middle filling with quite different intimacy. It doesn’t evoke pleasure, yet he tingles at the pressure.

His prick is soft along his belly, yet twitches slightly at the motion.

His ears attend Thor’s breathing again.

And again, he returns to the present - to the dim torchlight and dimmer silence between them.

Thor’s muscles strain as if lifting Mjolnir, and as Loki watches those veins awake and tremble, he cannot help but think Thor is trying too hard. He is gentle as he was the night before - an exploit Loki should be grateful for. He should, in fact, thank every part of Thor’s being. Yet indescribably, disturbingly, it _bores_ him.

Yes, that is the word - he is _bored_.

He is quite assuredly mad, at this. He is afraid of Thor’s strength, trembles before Thor’s wrath, yet he lays here under the God of Thunder twiddling his fingers. Thor is unbearably slow, disgustingly soft with him, and Loki is objecting this union the more he thinks on it.

He isn’t appalled. He isn’t resentful.

He is _deprived_.

He is mad.

He wants Thor to _look_ at him.

The Thunder god remains detached against Loki’s chest, muffled grunts escaping his mouth. He continues this way until he spills within Loki’s walls, and the god sits up without a word, averting eye-contact as he rises.

 

It’s interesting to Loki that he comes back. Night past night, in between one or two days of solitude, Thor returns to the Jotun’s chambers to forge what they have started. Night after night of it, Loki obliges him, grows used to their union without question.

Yet, he has one question. It sits between his legs.

One evening with the torches low, they are at their usual, quiet and slow.

Thor thrusts softly and Loki relaxes into him. The Trickster indulges his motions with passive interest, head turned elsewhere. By now, he has grown so accustomed it is as a routine. It is a relentless, feelingless routine at that, but he says nothing.

After moments that seem like multiple eternities, Thor wrenches forward.

Loki knows by now that this is a signal: that Thor has climaxed, thus the night is over. He shifts under him, half in the mind to push him off as he is so languid. Thor’s weight is difficult to bear after he loosens up - and the Trickster acknowledges this with dread, huffing under his log of a husband.

Yet, Thor does not move. He does not rise to his knees, sigh and gather his clothes. He does not pull out of the Trickster.

Loki tilts his head to him, wondering the problem. And nearly thrown off he is - for Thor begins to thrust again.

He pumps steadily, unwinding. The pressure rises, becomes faster. Thor wrenches - not too hard, but not soft as before - and Loki rests back down into the sheets, eyes wide with perplexity.

Thor isn’t rough, yet isn’t gentle. He heaves and grunts a little, then drops his pelvis until their hips lock slow. The pressure softens again, and it’s a strange ache that Loki has not yet felt. It is unbearable and pleasing, alighting his belly with odd sensation.

Loki feels, in this moment, odd all over.

His eyes shift slowly as Thor halts his motions. His gaze finds Thor - and strangely, Thor looks back.

The Thunderer raises his head to face Loki, a slow and deliberate glance. Their eyes lock, faces brushing so close. Neither speaks, neither looks away. Loki watches him deductively, a frown gracing his confusion. His lashes are low, before Thor’s are too... and then a blur.

Thor presses his mouth to the Trickster’s blue lips.

Silence proceeds, slowness follows.

Loki stays there a moment, not giving, simply taking. He eyes Thor dimly, watching and unmoving.

And then the instance is gone - Thor blinks down at him, turns his head away, and literally _ripping_ himself from the Trickster’s body, tosses the sheet as he flees.

He dashes out of the room, wordless and grunting. With the flash of a grimace to be remembered by, Thor is gone.

Loki hisses in fury as the door shuts behind him, crumpling the sheet between his fingers with an emotion he can’t name. He trembles from the sudden rush, feeling vile. He is appalled, filled with rage, shivering with anger.

He raises a finger to his lips. His mouth is raw from a nip Thor left behind, and he imagines blood. His innards thrum, his heart begins to steady.

His hand lingers at his mouth and feels the flesh tremble.

He knows exactly - _exactly_ \- what it is to fear. He’s afraid right now.

Yet he is mad, for he seeks out fear. He is a taunter of beasts and a playmate of fire.

He thinks, in his madness, he has just sparked an ember. It sits between his legs, lingers on his lips. He is angry, repulsed - for he is no longer bored.

He trembles with Thor’s touch, letting that ember rise to flame.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the longest chapter, i think, and i promise it won't be this long afterward.

_Pull me under_

_Before I try to drag you down_

_Someone has to pull me under_

_Before I try and drag you_

_Drag you_

_Drag you down_

_-Finger Eleven_

 

The time Loki transformed into a woman - a full-bodied Aesir woman - he did not touch himself.

The only male in an all-women’s academy of sorcery, he reviled, from day one, the conventions attributed to magic.

“Women are wickedness,” men would bark and snort. “Magic is wickedness.”

Men were warriors, women were mages. The world belonged to male kind and he, a freak of the order, wallowed in the shadows of the institute while women such as Amora the Enchantress laughed at him for his self-denial.

“Why so adamant your thighs, dear?” Amora would scoff when he stood before her in his female self. “So tight together. It seems the God of Lies doth lie to his own body.”

He dared not touch himself.

In the mirror, his breasts showed round and full, his hips wide and the cleft between his legs perfectly plump.

But he dared not touch.

No, this form was an illusion as any other. Loki was a man, truly and wholely, the sex which held the power and the pleasure of the world. They could jeer and demean him as they pleased, but Loki was no woman.

He could expend the principles that oft sought to deny him. He could twist the binds of nature, trick the world using his privilege as both male and female. He could charm women with his handsome face and soften men with his rippling female mirage.

But he dared not succumb to that which he reviled.

He knew who he was.

Knew what he was.

...At least, at the time, he _thought_ he knew.

And so it is that he wakes in the morning in his Jotun skin, a hand placed in the groove between his legs, pondering a long-denied nature in himself.

Loki’s eyes flutter open, the warm light from the window bathing him in gold. Abruptly, images flood his memory of the night he had shared with Thor just hours prior - when Thor had attained new strength in his hips, pushing the Trickster into a new, unexpected rhythm. Thor had bent his head and kissed his mouth, a full, drowning kiss just before cowering out of the room like a savage introvert.

He left Loki bereft and burning, throbbing with an emotion unnamed and indistinct yet so tangible. It was a feeling familiar as that when he would trick someone and watch it transpire. It reminded him of rousing chaos and watching people squirm and flee all about.

To him, there is something thrilling in rendering mischief for its true spontaneity. Like awaking a beast and unleashing it upon mankind, he finds _pleasure_ in wielding power.

When Thor had kissed him, he could instantly feel that brim of excitement through his cold blood.

It was vile, unnatural, and Loki was very much afraid. Yet he felt so _powerful_. So rich with insanity, tasting the fearful truth on Thor’s lips.

His hand is dipping between his legs. It lays firmly against the outer flesh of his mound, stroking lightly back and forth.

His naked manhood rests along his belly, and Loki’s head is spinning, feeling sick and experimental and strange. His fingers glide over the top of his feminine sex without daring to slip any lower.

No, he daren’t...he won’t touch that part of himself.

He won’t.

He closes his thighs and thinks of Thor, and words rouse from the dark corners of his mind in the voice of Amora.

“You keep your legs so tight, you might as well sew them together just like your mouth,” she laughs in his ear.

Loki twitches at the memory, yet his hand mysteriously remains there, pushing lightly against the skin. His flesh is soft along his inner thighs and where his cleft begins. He trails a finger down and the digit slides over his slit, receding lower until it meets the softest of places, the flesh so pliant his finger dips in without thought.

He gasps.

Without even realizing it, his legs have parted of their own accord, and he shuts them abruptly, clamping the hand in between.

"Oh, Loki," the imagined Amora teases, "what’s the matter? Afraid thou might enjoy it?"

His flesh is pulsing.

He is wet between his legs.

The brim of his entrance envelopes his finger with greed, coating it in sticky fluid.

His cock twitches, and Loki, unnerved by the strange reluctance his own body so clearly feels, pulls his hand back. His arm sets at his side, and he cringes.

He hates this feeling, yet he so loves it. Thor’s lips are in his memory, and then his hands and body, and for a moment Loki is closing his eyes and tasting Thor’s fear. And then more than his fear, more like his heady self-centeredness and boisterous rage.

He does so envy the storm that Thor rouses. And yet, is not envy simply love and hate in one?

In fact, Loki can rouse his own storms. He just summoned one in his husband last night.

His fingers tremble, though not with revilement. He is too elated to revile, too poisoned with newfound thrill. He feels mischievous, brimming with power. Wetness builds between his legs, and he lays there in the warm morning light until the Sun reminds him it is time to rise.

 

He chooses loose-fitting red robes for the day, slipping the garment over his head. The colour is a stark contrast against his skin, blue flesh meeting pure blood. His eyes trace the gold lining and trim of it in the mirror, and with a crooked smirk across his lips, he departs for breakfast.

He isn’t wearing anything underneath.

When he crosses the hall that leads to Thor’s bedroom, the door sways open as if thrust by a rampant hand.

Loki cocks his head inside. Lo and behold, no Thor.

He makes to look around, but before he can so much as manage a glance, he finds himself _pulled_ against the wind by a brutal force.

A man shoves Loki, and the Trickster whirls around, hissing indignantly at whomever dared impend such rudeness.

...

It’s Thor.

The Thunderer barges past Loki, his back slightly curved and facing his way, shoulders tense as if burdened by some great unspoken acrimony. The Trickster observes him with eyes wide, and Thor twists his head around, looks at him with something animal and perplexed.

“Thor?” The Trickster raises a hand toward him.

With a sniveling huff, his husband eyes him through a glower and proceeds to walk past him, taking a gust of wind with him that drags the gatherings of Loki’s robes. Thor grunts, mumbles something incoherent and bitter, and exits his way down the stairs, leaving his wife wide-eyed with disbelief.

_How dare he. What in the Nine could I have possibly done to hi-_

Loki pauses.

Blinks, a grin full of cruel mirth creasing his mouth.

_Oh._

He knows _precisely_ what he did. Memories of last night’s little scene come back to him, Thor’s heady kiss lingering on his mouth until the Thunderer pulls away with a jolt, thrusting Loki aside as if poisoned _scum_ as he cowers away.

How honorable of Thor, mostly in that Loki had actually done _nothing_ to deserve this callous outburst.

 _Going for another round of self-reproachful scapegoating, are we?_ Loki snivels.

Today will no doubt prove an interesting one.

He follows the stair that Thor had so basely trampled down, arriving at breakfast with a bow of his head.

Keening up at his son-in-law, Allfather takes Loki’s hand in his and squeezes lightly, a glint of pride in his one eye. Loki takes seat beside Odin, and the old man leans over to speak - just before Thor enters, head hanging low as he pulls a chair over roughly. Loki ignores him, eyes on his cupful of goat’s milk and honey.

“I’ve arranged a small engagement with King Byleistr this morning,” Allfather imparts across the table. “Small, but very conclusive. You both are to be there without delay.”

The Trickster nods, feeling Thor grumble next to him though not obliging him with a single glance. He can sense the squirm in Thor. His grimace, his boiling blood.

The Thunderer begins to eat and rest his hands about the table, all restless, sloppy motions, purposely making a clamor of the tableware.

“He’ll no doubt inquire about the state of childbearing between you,” Odin continues.

“Byleistr my brother?” Loki asks.

Allfather nods. “Aye.”

A bitter chuckle.

Thor clinks his bowl against the table, clearing his throat boorishly. “You can tell him about the changing rate of brothers to wives,” he snorts, leaning over toward Loki’s ear.

The Trickster stiffens, holding back every nerve that urgingly seeks to answer. He knows better than to start trouble, unlike his brash husband.

_...Or, isn’t it the opposite?_

He inhales, exhales, returning to his meal with clenching fingers. Thor sits back, and for a moment he thinks he can be calm. Allfather and Frigga are silent beside them, and the quietude is reassuring.

Until...

“No doubt this _brother_ of yours finds it suitable to alternate men into mothers whenever it interests him,” Thor adds with venom, his tone soft enough that only Loki can truly catch all the words.

_Oh._

The Trickster turns abruptly, a light smile over his teeth. “Excuse me?”

He isn’t letting Thor reap victory here, oh no.

The God of Thunder tilts his head, regarding Loki with that immovable glower, bitter and tense and challenging. Loki is sure, now, he will answer; Thor always sought out his battles with the intention of finishing them.

Yet, he doesn’t.

He rises from his seat with no more than his grimaced brow toward Loki and turns, heading for the stair. Just as that, wordless and hardened.

 _Oh, no, no._ Loki glares at him almost hissing, thrusting out of his own chair and yanking Thor’s arm.

“Well?” he spits. “Is that all you’ve got to say about this? Is it?”

 In the midst of disgust, he barely realizes he’s broken his own code. But this little game Thor started intrigues him too much.

“There is nothing more to be said,” Thor replies coldly, then adds with a hiss: “Snake.”

Loki burns.

“Oh, a snake is Loki? How like a warrior drowning in guilt, blaming a harmless serpent for his transgressions because it happens to be there.”

“You think yourself untouched, do you?” Thor nearly grins.

The words seem familiar.

_"You think yourself above them?”_

Loki hisses. “Yes I do.”

The Thunderer leans in, shoulders tensing. “You are a snake. A destroyer, a corrupter. You twist yourself around a man until he’s strangled, gasping for air.”

Such words nearly leave the Trickster bereft, shocked by their unearthing when Thor had spent so much time being kind. But Loki only sneers, shaking his head.

“You are a _brat_ ,” he says, leering forward. “Go on, accuse the Trickster because it’s convenient for you. Say that I tempted you. Say that it was _I_ who dragged you below your righteous surface, because that is what snakes do. And they’ll believe you, whomsoever you tell, because it was _I_ who did it.”

Thor glares at him fiercely all the while, and he continues: “But you’ll have to keep the truth locked within your conscience, for it was not _my_ lips that sought out yours.”

Thor’s parents acknowledge the heat of the conversation, yet they do nothing to stop it, staring at each other then back at the warring couple.

“I would seek out the Earth whore if I were you, perhaps bed her and feel less guilty about it because she’s not your brother.” Loki basks in the power of his words as he watches Thor’s face shift from angered to _vicious_ , laughing evilly.

Thor raises his arm then, a clenching fist surging toward Loki’s face just before he holds himself back. His effort strains in his muscles, and he grits his teeth as Loki grins with wide, elated eyes.

“You’d strike your wife?” the Trickster gasps mockingly. He steps back as if allowing Thor space to confront his own brutal baseness.

“It were better when you were not,” Thor grumbles bitterly.

He makes to walk away, turning his back to Loki and reaching for the door with trampling boots.

The Liesmith scoffs, looking him up and down from behind. “At least your whore comes with an already-dripping cunt,” he spits out to him, and Thor cannot help but to turn back with immediate rage.

“What did you say about-”

“ _Thor!_ ”

This time, it is Frigga, who slams her fist against the table and eyes them across the room with disgust.

“That’s quite enough,” she pronounces, and Thor halts for a moment before growling under his breath and retreating without a word.

He dashes past Loki as he had before, and the Trickster lowers his head to conceal a little mischievous smile.

 

Moments, hours slip by and Loki keeps no track of time. He wanders the quiet aisles of the library, the train of his robes dragging behind him.

He isn’t coming down to Allfather’s meeting, casually pretending it slipped his mind.

No, he needs to be alone. Needs the solitude between the bookshelves so that he can think.

His fingers search the shelves, wandering over scrolls and ancient works from where he had once drawn powerful magic. The halls are quiet, void of all voices save for the words across those pages. The silence is comforting, and Loki leans into it, standing still and inhaling softly.

Under the confines of his clothes, something prickles. It is faint and warm and spreads up his tailbone, bathing his hips in a tingling sensation. His prick is hard, twitching under his robes. Yet it isn’t his prick that _rivets_ him so.

With his back to the dim light, he allows himself to drift. He discovers in the quietude of the hall that his feminine sex is wet, dripping from thoughts and musings and unanswered questions. Like this morning, his body is hungry. His fingers twitch, longing to test and touch. The flesh under his prick pulsates, bereft, and he is eager to be touched where he had never dared before.

It’s ironic, he finds; he is wet thinking of Thor.

It’s sick; it’s repulsing. He longs to thrust into the hands that could potentially destroy him.

Thor must feel so _heavy_ with sin, so seething with rage like the beast harboring inside all men. And it’s a self-destructive, vain fantasy of Loki’s to tempt that beast. He wants to see it in those feral blue eyes, like he did this morning - draw it out of Thor until he sates his wrath with him. He remembers Thor’s kiss on his lips and cannot help but delight in that helpless self-hate Thor must feel.

He knows it is sick; knows only madmen and monsters take pleasure in pain. Yet Loki is all of these things: self-loathing, narcissistic and afraid, longing to seduce a beast and longing to be _wrecked_ by it.

He stands there in the library taking in this longing. It’s sweet and beckoning, dragging him onto a cloud. He closes his eyes as if in dream, and one hand travels down, tentative. It hesitates in its searching until it reaches where he throbs. He is naked beneath his robes, and through the fabric, his fingers push.

“Oh,” a whispered moan drips off his tongue. He’s so engulfed, he can’t suppress it.

Lightly, slowly, he cups himself. The fabric gathers under his heavy prick, rubs between the cleft that enshrouds his little dripping hole.

Like a little game, he teases himself. His fingers graze and dip through the fabric, barely stroking enough before pulling back. He presses in, pulls away, presses in again, until the teasing has his arousal hot and bobbing up underneath his robes. He grants his body feather-touches, never satisfying, ever building new wetness within his unexplored female lust. It is alien and different, so new and so _sweet_.

He continues this here-and-there rhythm in between exploring the shelves. A touch, and then he stops, looks over a book, then begins again.

He keens, and in his musings, discovers that he is not alone. A shadow appears in the far-corner of the library, past the aisles Loki dwells in. He becomes aware of it in a heartbeat, remembering himself against unwanted eyes. The person soon walks to the other side until it fades, and he shrugs, unphased. Whomever it is, they’re gone, and he proceeds into the further aisles where he can attain total solitude.

Wandering like a spirit, he ventures into a dim part of the library. The books here seem old, unkempt; his fingers travel over them, picking up dust.

It is peaceful in the dark, as it has always been for him. He can muse and speculate for hours, lose himself in texts and no one will find him.

He takes seat beside a pile of books, prying one from the top and grazing his finger over its gold inscription. His back relaxes into the wall, and soon again, his thoughts trail down under his robes.

His thighs press together, and when they do, he can feel his own arousal seeping through. It makes him feel wicked, wanton, and he grins to himself. He thinks of Thor, and the pressure of his closed legs only serves to elate his prick.

Thor must hate him right now, hate him so very much. Loki nearly giggles.

He wants to close his eyes, but stops himself.

Suddenly, he feels a cold isolation in the dark, as if he had wandered too far. He looks up to find an obstruction in the far light.

Someone is here. Someone is with him.

The shadow has returned, his old friend from before whom he had sought to slink away from. He thought slipping into this old section of the library would grant him some desired alone-time; apparently not.

Loki frowns, peering out at the distant person's silhouette. Whoever it is, they have a similar taste in literature to be coming around this far...

_Hmph._

He wrinkles his nose in irritation and props himself from the floor, collecting part of his robes in hand before taking an elusive exit for quieter corners.

He slips into the darker parts of the halls where books gather dust, long-forgotten. No doubt, these aisles are the ones holding many secrets on their shelves. Books and scrolls forbidden for generations, locked away in the shadows where only the knowledgeable seek them out. All devils’ arts, all preserved to be picked up by hands only surreptitious as his own.

He eyes one work atop a shelf and fingers its cover. There are all kinds of demons here, and some of them happen to divulge in sex. He nearly plucks one off the shelf to read.

He pulsates warmly between his legs, and just as so, his ears detect movement.

Loki raises his head. From the corner of his eye, something - a presence - dispatches from one end of the hall to the other.

A shadow.

The same shadow he’s walked away from twice now.

He bites his lip, disgruntled. It can’t be a coincidence now, can it? He knows he isn’t imagining this out of some disdainful aversion toward company. He has attended this library day in and day out for years, and hardly anyone in his experience has lingered this far from the sacred writings toward the front by the doors.

Perhaps he is overthinking. He knows he is not the only one who would come to the back looking for quiet.

Whoever it might be, Loki will certainly not sit around to find out.

He gathers his robes and departs, retreating under the sanctum of the shade.

His eyes trace the endless rows of books above his head, and he tries to preoccupy himself reading, reaching out for one with a black leather binding.

_Seidkonur, Midgard witches..._

He grins a little in spite, missing his magic.

Just as he begins to unlatch the book, there comes a noise. It’s a faint shuffle, almost as heavy fabric or paper, but he feels it very close behind his back and immediately twists his head around.

His eyes widen. His fingers tremble.

Splayed out under a dim spot of torchlight...a shadow. Peeking behind the shelf, standing there in the impression of a man.

It’s the same damned person from before.

It _has_ to be.

Loki is sure it must be, and he clenches the book in his hand with mindless panic, frozen in place.

 _No, no,_ he tells himself; this is no accident. This is no coincidence. Four times now, there is no excuse.

Someone is following him.

Someone is definitely, unquestionably following him.

He can’t shake off the dreadful isolation in his bones, just stands there wallowing in grief-stricken speculation. Who would seek him out, when he is most alone and unprepared combatively? Any number of devils could be looking for him for any number of reasons. Frankly, he isn’t in the mind, spirit or desired body to deal with unwanted company.

At first, he cannot think beyond the worst... but then he shifts, peering from the side at the person’s shadow. Interestingly, whoever it is remains still, enabling Loki to make out broad shoulders and a tall build. It is certainly male, certainly cloaked.

He squints, sliding the book back in its place with minimal noise.

Another would bark, "who's there?", but the God of Mischief is no fool. Judging by his silent pursuer's elusiveness, he doesn't want Loki to be aware of him.

_Well, then. I’d hate to disappoint._

Clenching his train, he takes a swift turn. He doesn’t look back, doesn’t bother a glimpse. If this person is playing a game, then by all means, Loki will play.

He folds his hands behind his back, sauntering casually through the aisles. His feet are light as they step, watchful of his every motion. He listens when there is movement, watches for sillhouettes as they appear.

He finds after a while that his pursuer is actively keeping up. He can hear the scrape of his own robes against the shuffle of another’s. His shady friend moves quickly, but not quietly, and after a while Loki’s eyes brighten with suspicion.

The sounds grow louder, and Loki slows down. After some time, he detects the hard sound of boots. They grow closer, and as an experiment, the Trickster stops in front of a shelf.

As suspected, his pursuer halts too.

Loki draws a book in silence, glancing about without turning his head. He notes now that he’s driven his friend all the way to the back of the library, and with caution, proceeds to take a left; it’s one thing to lure a predator, it’s another to trap onesself in the process.

Moving forward allows him to steal a glance - and when he does so, a little flow of _red_ escapes from behind the corner of an adjacent bookcase.

Red. This person is cloaked in red.

Loki smiles to himself, striding about on a straight path. He comes to another aisle, and just as before, stops. A flicker of a moment, and his follower stops too.

They uphold this little game until the Trickster senses a shift. The boots have become louder in their pursuit, more rushed but still far behind him. They follow him with such vigor, and after a while of listening and watching, Loki is certain he knows who it is.

Yes, he most certainly _knows_ by the sound.

He comes to a warmly lit cubicle: the center of the library. By now, his friend must indeed be ridden out, deeply tired from holding back. He knows from the resonance of those angry boots that there is no more restraint left in this man.

And so he makes a choice: he offers himself as bait.

Like a heedless deer bowing its head to graze, Loki settles into the corner preoccupied by a book. With his back facing the open room, he appears unsuspecting as prey; and indeed, his predator is watching him, stepping into the light as Loki hears him come forward.

The Jotun does not turn, does not break his act of feigning. A shadow raises behind him until his form is bathed in it. He can hear the boots, their clamor anteceded by the flow of a heavy cape upon the floor.

But he does not turn, no.

Not until his friend is close enough to touch.

Then with a slow tilt, his eyes meet... Thor’s.

His husband glares down at him, flooding Loki in the dark impression of himself. He stands before him in all the tense rage stifled from this morning’s bout. He’s so very angry, so very potent with destruction in his clenching fists - his veins standing out on his arms and his teeth bared.

He didn’t show at Byleistr’s meeting either, and Loki knows why.

 _Yes._ Loki’s breath labors with heady prospect. _I know why you’re here. I know why you chase me._

In this moment, a berserkr has possessed Thor, a pure, unsated bloodlust curling under his skin, his eyes borne with the _red_ he must so long to draw from Loki’s impudent body.

Loki licks his lips before creasing them into a smug grin. His back to the entrapping wall of books now, he has nowhere to flee, nowhere left to lead Thor on. And he so _wants_ it this way, making show of his pride in that relentless smile.

Neither says a word, standing there in the warmly lit hall. Neither moves, neither looks away.

Thor’s great grimace is powerful, filled with hatred and helplessness and licentious wrath. It is the dominion Loki so fears and so lusts for, and he dares gaze into it with his own challenging sneer.

 _Yes._ He leers forward, mouth open as if an unhindered beast.

And they _are_ beasts - both of them - at the very edge of their sanity, baring their nails and boring into each other with raw apprehension. Thor is his opposer, his very real adversary in this war he is about to wage.

He hasn’t a clue what Thor will do, and it excites him - makes him tempt the beast, goad it with his cruel smile.

No words, no motion to speak.

Thor gnarls at him, his pure animal rising from this very lost soul that Loki has driven him into becoming. His eyes glint of pain, of the desire to rend and decimate beyond law.

He wants to _break_ Loki - the Trickster knows it - and without a word, his wrath is upon his helpless wife.

Thor pushes him into the wall, thrusts him so roughly and remorselessly into it he jolts with pain. He crowds Loki with his broad form, his cape whirling behind him as the Trickster’s spine digs into the rack of shelves, lifted up with effortless anger so that his feet dangle off the floor.

Ragged gulps for breath escape their mouths.

One hand yanks Loki’s black locks back viciously, the other coming to cup his face. In a blur, Thor’s mouth is on him. Crowding him. Kissing him. Digging his nose into Loki’s cheekbones, and the Trickster’s mind is screaming with truth.

Thor wants him. Desires him. This is the raw, true Thor beneath that wall of vengeance he wrought this morning.

_This is Odin’s son. This is Asgard’s King._

If his lips weren’t assaulted and nipped at by Thor’s forcing mouth, he would laugh.

_You revile to cover your own sick lust._

The kiss breaks, teeth dragging over bruised blue lips. Thor heaves forward, his armored hips clashing between Loki’s unprotected legs; Loki groans at the sharp pain, craning his neck. The violence in his husband is enthralling, so long since it has risen to crush Loki - and he is quite literally crushed now, at the mercy of Thor’s strength and power that he will very well exert until it drains dry.

The Thunderer’s hand darts under Loki’s robes, thrusting the layers of fabric aside with his glare locked on Loki’s face. The Trickster gasps when calloused fingers cup his naked sex, blood-filled eyes wide upon being exposed.

_Yes._

A rough digit presses into his center, uncovering the hot, pulsing, wicked secret under Loki’s prick.

 _Yes_. Loki is dripping wet on Thor’s finger, grinning up at him. His little hole clenches, so wanton beneath that wintery front, nude beneath his robes like the two-faced snake he is.

Thor snarls in revulsion - for he knows now what he is.

_“At least your whore comes with an already-dripping cunt.”_

He laughs weakly, feeling the sardonic cruelty of Thor’s mien. The Trickster moans, then, as Thor’s hand falls away, instead shoving him back to work at his breeches. The laces come undone, knot by knot, and Thor frees his cock, tugging roughly for Loki’s view.

And what a display - his husband’s desire so prominent between his legs. Thor’s prick is hard, thick with blood like the red hungry glint in his eyes. The Trickster nearly arches, tongue darting along his lips with that same hunger.

He groans, eager to speak - eager to _ruin_ Thor with truth - but the Thunderer is ruthless in his movements, granting him no time to do so as he drives into Loki without warning.

“Ohh,” dripping with lust, with hate and everything contained into one, the Trickster moans.

Thor pounds his hips into him, grunting. His member spears him all the way until it’s painful, until it hits an end. They cry out as a chorus, into the warm air between them, shamelessly filling the silence as Thor begins to rut.

Loki’s walls clench, and he tries to buck, but Thor’s hold on him is unforgiving. He is as a toy, there to be strung and yanked, thrust into the wall of books with cruel restraint as he gasps. The ridges jab into his spine, drawing pain, drawing cries and arduous whimpers. _Slice_ and _skim_ , the wood shelf scrapes him against Thor’s brutal motions, Loki’s back skidding up and down until a burn spreads ripe and riveting.

Books shake about, whole rows of them stirring as Thor hoists him and pounds into his Jotun heat. Shelves begin to sway, tall and looming, emitting a heavy groan as they start to tilt off the floor.

Loki laughs between desperate breaths, crazed and intoxicated with all that is Thor and the ruin of their peaceful contempt.

 _Yes, yes,_ Loki keens, slick and alight, _desecrate the way you crave each and every night._

He knows Thor longs to destroy him, constrained against his will even to arch into his touch. No, Thor will not let him take part - will not let him buck back, will not give him the pleasure of control. He keeps him flat against that wall, rutting into him over and over, forcing Loki’s legs apart with minimal freedom to wrap them around his sweating husband.

More and more, he drives deep into Loki, blue nails sinking into the leather across his back. They leave half-moon rivets, and Thor bucks remorselessly, his heaving breath hot in Loki’s ear.

Armor digs, fabric scrapes. The bookshelves swerve unsteadily, threatening to fall.

Their reckless coupling wades on, until Loki’s vision wanes, his robes falling from his shoulders like the wanton thing he is. His legs dangle and jolt against Thor’s rhythm, toes curling in delight as they rut faster and harder.

Then Thor stops, crushing against him a last time with a groan, and the Trickster is whining.

Books fall, slumping open onto the cold floor.

Loki exhales greedily, senseless with mirth and lust. His lids grow heavy over his red eyes, and his lungs battle for air, chest rising under his robes as his nipples rub, ripe and elated. His cunt is flexing, greedy for more, slick with the need that Thor has not yet satisfied.

Just as he begins to mourn, Thor pulls away. His prick slips from Loki’s seething body, still hard, and he steps back into the light as it emanates his slick sweat.

Eyeing a table inches from their rut, he yanks Loki’s arm, and suddenly the Trickster is being forced slack against hard wood. Thor throws him onto the table face-down, the brute he is, and Loki howls with laughter, poisoned with the sick enjoyment of being used.

Bent with his rear up, he bucks, and Thor holds him down with one strong hand as the other fumbles with his dress. He tears at the layers of fabric, scrunching them up to Loki’s waist with ruthless resolve. The robes lift, exposing his bare ass for Thor’s view, a full show of shameless want as he beckons Thor with a wriggle.

Loki grins, heady mouth open in wait. His head tilted to the side, he watches Thor’s glower with hazy thrill. So angry is his spouse, so vengeful his touch.

The Thunderer thumbs his entrance, gliding the crown of his length between his pulsing little slit. No doubt, he is glistening before Thor’s eyes, hot and dripping between his greedy cleft. Loki’s own prick has by now desperately swelled, twitching under his belly at the feel of Thor’s flesh.

The crude sound of their joining sex, and Thor is thrusting inside him again, pushing him into the creaking wood. Warm, thick hands on either side of his hips, the Trickster moans; so base, so unrelenting is this Thor as he fucks into his wife, that Loki cannot help but grow slick within his womb. He clenches around him, keening with pain, hands clawing at the table as he struggles to hold on.

Thor ruts faster and faster, pulling Loki’s ass flush to him as he moves. The Liesmith cries out, so full with his husband’s - his once-brother’s - desire, and his head perks up when something _wonderful_ is hit. He whines, longing to buck up, and just as so, a hot hand slithers under him to grip his cock. Surprised and riddled, Loki yelps, jolting up as Thor tugs his pulsing prick.

 _Yes, yes,_ he would chant in this delirium, if not for the failure of his drooling tongue. His elbows beat into the table as he wrenches, and in this moment, there is naught but truth.

“Still afraid, little half-wench?” the imagined Amora in his head cackles on.

 _No, not anymore,_ Loki answers in his mind. _Though I never was, truly within._

Blurred images recount themselves in the face of Thor, bitter against their marriage and pounding Loki into bed. He could smile at his state now, for he knows not whether he’s been broken.

_I’ve dragged Thor to his lowest; now he’ll punish me as I deserve._

Yes, there is one certainty among all that waver: he is a vessel, the sanctum of Thor’s inner strife.

Thor drives him into the hard wood, spilling within Loki’s womb in a completion of the justice he has sought. A guttural cry escapes his lips, and Loki envelopes him fully - in body as in metaphor.

 _Yes, I am your vessel,_ he moans, _as you are the substance for which I will coil._

Thor tugs his blue prick until he bursts, spending himself dry into the Aesir’s hand.

In the aftermath of the haze, barely able to collect himself, he stands woozy before Thor with slick strands of hair clinging to his neck and face. Thor grunts at him, his anger sated though still bared, and the Trickster looks into his eyes with a wide grin creasing his mouth.

He takes his exit, limping past Thor with a satisfied moan on his tongue. No words spoken between them, he watches his husband watch him back until he slips into the dark, past the library doors.

Thor does naught but stare.

 

Night wades, and the Thunder god proceeds into his room. Locking the door behind him, he little expects the image he receives upon turning back.

His eyes wide before they squint in umbrage, Thor tenses.

Standing before his bed, Loki unties his robe with careless calm. He should not be in Thor’s chamber, not after their vile encounter today.

The robe slips from Loki’s body and pools around his feet. The Trickster stares into his husband, collective and almost smiling, and Thor steps forward with a grimace as before.

“I believe words are in order between us,” Loki echoes from an old convergence.

Thor snarls at him, clenching his fists. “Your atonements aren’t welcome.”

“Who said anything about atoning?” Loki grins. “You were a base, impudent slut today, after you cowered from the truth behind petty hate.”

Thor glares at his nudity.

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck me.”

The God of Thunder lunges forward, yanking Loki’s hair with one hand before pressing their mouths together.


	11. Chapter 11

“Ignominy!” Odin booms, the globose structure of the room echoing the full enmity of his voice. The old man paces beside Hlidskialf, glaring atop the stairs at his son. “Disgrace! Irresponsible! Shame upon my House!”

Thor hangs his head low as the scoldings come in blows, hands folded at his waist. Behind him, his Queen looks off to the side, flinching at Odin’s condemnation from the center of the Great Hall.

“Where were you yesterday?” Allfather demands. “Were my words unclear? ‘You both are to be at King Byleistr’s counsel’, is that not what I said yesterday morn? What in the Nine could have kept you from coming straight downstairs?”

“Father-”

“Byleistr was promised an audience on our behalf, and now Asgard may have well broken credence with his people because _the Allfather could not fulfill his word_.”

Thor cringes at his boiling rancor.

Odin continues, “have you any inclination of severity? Have you no remorse, no discretion for your people? What must I teach you, time and time again, about what it is to be King? You have a crown, a throne, and this is how you would wield opportunity?” The storm of his words grows, and he steps into the light above Thor. “We have great urgency with Jotunheim to restore coalition. Our chances wane to very little, and it is mere _luck_ that Byleistr has conceded to respond peacefully after all that’s happened. I promised him an audience with my son, and an audience he should have _had_!”

His son makes to speak, parting his lips before Allfather descends from the stair.

“There is no gratifying negligence with an unstable realm. Have you any mind how _shameful_ this House looked yesterday, two seats empty in front of the Jotun King?”

A moment of heated glares. Thor’s nostrils flare from his own pained, held-back embarrassment as Allfather leans over.

But before the reprehension can continue, Loki slides forward, shyly.

“Your Majesty, please,” his words nearly a whisper, “Please, he-”

“Hold your tongue,” Odin cuts him off.

“But-”

“Know your place.”

Loki stiffens, for the old man is right. It’s almost funny, hearing the words used to subdue him all his life. Even now, delivered from his past as an outcast and a miscreant, there stand familiar structures of repression. There is yet another place for him beneath Thor and his father, this time as a wife - a female. The fact is unsettling, unexclusive to reminders.

But he hasn’t mourned in a long time, and he doesn’t intend to today.

“What have you to answer?” Odin barks at Thor. He leans over him, quashing Thor’s mettle, and Loki observes the two noting how _bereft_ the Thunder god stares. Loki can see Thor is struggling to speak, his eyes reddened and glassy.

“Your Majesty,” he decides to persist despite the first warning. He steps forward, taking Thor’s side.

Odin turns, his glower a threat.

“It is my fault,” he says before Allfather can interject, and the old man stills at this, no doubt staggered by his abrupt repentance. Odin eyes him with suspicion, but remains silent, and the Trickster works up a well-used abashed front in his mien.

“I kept Thor from his duty. I distracted him yesterday,” he explains, then adds coyly, “please, Majesty, let me take full responsibility. Your son is not to blame.”

“Loki...” Thor turns to him with a shake of his head, but the Jotun twines their hands together even as Thor protests, “please don’t, you don’t have to...”

Loki shakes his head. “It’s all right.”

“And to this I should pay heed, because a wife decides to pledge loyalty?” Odin snaps, observing them.

The couple stills.

“Taking his defense resolves nothing,” Odin barks, and Loki shudders, lowering his eyes. “You made a depravity of yourselves yesterday, in front of your mother, spewing perversions like children. How was I to present my son and his wife to Byleistr, after the demonstrative _chaos_ I witnessed?”

Thor and Loki flinch as one at his every shout, brows hardening, but the Allfather pauses then, looking them up and down.

“This marriage is unhappy, unprosperous. I see that now.”

A unified gasp.

“No.” Loki shakes his head, eyes wide as Allfather stands stolid, eyeing their confusion.

Odin sighs. “You are both unsuited, and if I had presented this to Byleistr he would have agreed.”

“No, Majesty, please listen...”

“It is clear that neither of you have strove to put aside selfish individual for the greater good. You’ve no regard for peace, for sanctity between the lives of your peoples.”

“Allfather...”

“You’ve no place on the throne of Asgard.”

“ _Father!_ ”

The desperate cry of their protests carries through the room, a unified echo that bounces off the walls. Loki squeezes Thor’s hand in his. Silence follows, and the Queen steps forward.

“Allfather,” he asserts, standing before Odin. “Express permission for me to disagree.”

The old man stares, unmoved but heedful, and this, Loki deems, is permission enough.

“There is great damage in what we have done. We have recognized that, and we accept punishment,” he begins. He takes Thor’s side once more and looks into blue eyes. “But whatever price there is to pay... do not separate us. Do not take away our marriage.”

He stands beside Thor shoulder-to-shoulder, clasping his hand with a fervency they’ve never dealt.

“I admit that we’ve fought,” he continues. “We have repulsed this union since the beginning.”

“Then why should it continue?” Odin huffs.

“Because we are trying.”

A faint smile, hopeful and sincere, spreads along his blue lips.

“We’ve been trying for Jotunheim, every day.”

So close their distance, Thor looks into red eyes and cannot help but smile back. There is something substantial in their gaze, new yet much-uplifting, and as they stare eye-to-eye, Odin cannot deny the beam escaping their spirit. He watches them, their closeness, their willing nudges, and in silence he bites his lip and softens his brow.

“You mean to say that you...” He observes their expressions, their nodding as they smile back at him in desperation, and then - right then - does Allfather realize.

“This is...” his tone lightens, almost a chuckle at this new knowledge, and he embraces their shoulders lightly with a hand. “This is... had I known....”

Loki leans his head into Thor’s arm, pressing his face there with new affection.

“You can tell Byleistr that we are very soon pregnant,” he says with pride.

Allfather nods, just before he shakes his head. “I’m afraid that is _your_ engagement.” He looks relieved, almost happy.

Thor brushes his forehead against the other’s lightly, nodding. Odin steps back, erected with new judgment.

“You will go to Jotunheim, and you will ensure the King that our agreement still stands,” he pronounces. He doesn’t indulge them with a smile, but there is faith in his words, and Loki can only rest within Thor’s arm with utter relief painted in his soft expression.

 

Never has Loki retired so early in the day.

But then, he has never found such urgency to come to bed.

Gossamer are his sheets, fine silks that bundle at his legs and waist and wherever tossed in the midst of play. Cool daylight bathes his chamber, a slight breeze finding itself adrift from his open window where Asgard shines just outside. The air is comforting, clear, drawing lightness where he had so long forgotten how to breathe.

He lays there languid, stretching his limbs from new aches that have arisen. They’re pleasant aches; the small snap of his bones, and he is smiling giddily toward the clouds, feeling light and drowsy and filled with contempt for time. Bedsheets gather in his hands, and he twists and toys them playfully, sleepy as a cat that contents itself under the warm Sun.

There is little care in his mind, an alien calm in his bones. As if ridden of it, he can’t seem to recall what heaviness feels like.

Perhaps he is too tired to remember.

Beside him, Thor rolls his weight along the bed, burying his face into the dip of Loki’s neck and placing ghosts of kisses there.

“Did you mean what you said?” he rumbles against Loki’s skin. The vibrating voice is pleasant and tickling.

“Mm,” a small sound, as though a nod in agreement. A smile curves his wife’s lips, and Loki leans his face into ruffled blonde hair. His lids droop languidly.

“Hm?” Thor perks his head up. “Back there with Father, did you...mean it? About our marriage?”

“Mmyes,” Loki mumbles. A thick wandering finger circles his breast, and he opens his eyes with half-aware assuredness. “Yes, I was sincere,” he says, looking into Thor’s face.

“You are happy, then?”

He nods.

“A while ago, you spoke of fidelity...”

“Mm.”

“Did you mean that?”

“Yes.” Loki leans back into his pillow. Thor frowns a little, if not but curious, but he reads his worry and the Jotun nuzzles his neck. “Trouble yourself not,” Loki whispers. “I promise nothing but love.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. Now let me sleep.”

His lashes lower again, and Thor huffs between a smile. Relaxing softly against Loki’s breast, he traces lines, brushing fingers over those blue grooves along his skin. Small kisses replace his fingers, feeling cool Jotun flesh on his lips, and Thor takes in his pine scent, sweet and clear.

He is reminded of a light snow.

Loki’s chest inhales and rises, exhales and falls, a slow, silent rhythm that itself sends Thor’s awakeness adrift. A sated grunt escapes him, and he lies over his wife pondering their drowsy exchange. Words fade unregistered, dampened out by afterglow’s pull.

_“A wife’s fidelity should be boundless. The more I give, the more I shall come to never stop.”_

Little flickers of worry, small inklings of truth. In the end, darkened out by sleep, he remembers nothing. He is light as air, adrift on a cloud beside Loki-that-is.

Loki-that-was is no more, and had never mattered but to conceal a great desire. Anger is gone, differences have been settled. Yesterday they fought, today the war has ended. They are lovers now, not bound but simply hand-in-hand.

Thor falls deep into a slumber, dreaming of darkness in midday.


End file.
